by Judith Curry
UPDATE: Email from Joe Bast
“You can not simultaneously say that you want to promote a debate while equating the other side to terrorists and mass murderers.” — Ross McKitrick
This past week, Heartland held its 7th Climate Conference in Chicago. I’ve looked at the program, nothing in particular caught my interest, I’ve seen previous presentations from most of the scientific participants. I would much rather glance at ppt files, than take the time to watch a podcast; unfortunately no ppts are available and I didn’t go through any of the podcasts. Seems that some of the astronauts were in attendance, they have written a new letter which is highlighted at WUWT.
A talk by Vaclav Klaus highlighted at WUWT seems to articulate best what is going on at the Heartland Conference:
To sum up my today’s simple message: empirical data are important; scientific discoveries are important; the disclosure of malpractices in the IPCC and other “bastions” of the GWD are important; but we have to take part in the undergoing ideological battle. The subtitle of my five years old book was “What is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?” There is no doubt that it is all about freedom. We should keep that in mind.
Fighting the battle
What is most interesting about the Conference is the ‘battle’ part of all this, which Heartland seems to be losing. Joe Bast describes the ‘battle’ in this recent blog post:
Regarding tactics, since the “Fakegate” scandal, Greenpeace has contacted the employers of every scientist who works for us, demanding that they be fired for having the temerity to question the official dogma of global warming. Can you imagine a more egregious attack on free speech and open academic debate? Donors to Heartland in the past two years have been the subject of hate mail, letter-writing and telephone campaigns, and online petitions demanding that they stop funding us. All of this happened BEFORE we ran a controversial billboard for a single day a few weeks ago.
Finally, regarding the billboard, after 15 years of being the target of vicious ad hominem attacks, we decided to punch back instead of stand back. Our billboard was factual: The Unabomber was motivated by concern over man-made global warming to do the terrible crimes he committed. He still believes in global warming. We simply put his picture on a billboard, pointed out the “inconvenient truth,” and asked, “do you?”
The mainstream media, which has tolerated and even promoted people who call global warming skeptics “Nazis” and “traitors’ and called for the death penalty for skeptics, now pretends to be “outraged” by this billboard. We took it down immediately and admitted that it was in poor taste and a mistake, but they continue to promote madmen on the other side of the issue including Michael Mann and Bill McKibben, and hypocritically pound on us for our “ethical lapse.” This is fake indignation, being staged by ideological extremists as part of the ongoing attack on us and our donors. It is not sincere, it is not accurate, and it is not ethical.
Losing the battle
That Heartland is losing the battle is discussed by several recent articles in the Guardian:
The Guardian has several articles on this [here and here], some excerpts:
But as the latest Heartland climate conference opens in a Chicago hotel on Monday, the thinktank’s claims to reasoned debate lie in shreds and its financial future remains uncertain.
Over the last few weeks, Heartland has lost at least $825,000 in expected funds for 2012, or more than 35% of the funds its planned to raise from corporate donors, according to the campaign group Forecast the Facts, which is pushing companies to boycott the organisation.
The organisation has been forced to make up those funds by taking its first publicly acknowledged donations from the coal industry. The main Illinois coal lobby is a last-minute sponsor of this week’s conference, undermining Heartland’s claims to operate independently of fossil fuel interests.
Its entire Washington DC office, barring one staffer, decamped, taking Heartland’s biggest project, involving the insurance industry, with them.
Board directors quit, conference speakers cancelled at short-notice, and associates of long standing demanded Heartland remove their names from its website. The list of conference sponsors shrank by nearly half from 2010, and many of those listed sponsors are just websites operating on the rightwing fringe.
Could the turmoil and discontent at Heartland eventually prove its undoing? Campaigners would certainly hope so. “We are watching the consequences of organisation that acts quite randomly and that is actually an extremist organisation in the end,” said Davies. “They are not built to be at the hump of the climate denial movement.”
But while more mainstream corporate entities are deserting Heartland, others are stepping into the breach, including the coal lobby and conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation.
Heartland had hoped to use the Gleick episode, which it calls “Fakegate”, to gain sympathy, and rebuild a donor network. But even well-wishers acknowledged it would be an uphill climb for an organisation that was once at the hub of the climate contrarian network.
“It certainly raises the cost of doing business when your arch-enemies or a very vocal segment knows what you are up to in every little detail,” said Marc Morano, who runs the contrarian website Climate Depot and spoke at the conference.
But he said he was hopeful that Heartland would come back. “I think it’s a temporary feeding frenzy,” he said. “If Heartland had just started last year and only had 10 donors when that happened it could have been fatal. But this is a hiccup.”
I found this to be especially interesting:
But this year’s event had a sense of desperation. Speakers spoke about being “victimised” by “warmists” and “alarmists” – scientists and politicians who accept that carbon dioxide emissions from industry are a main driver of climate change.
And after nearly 30 years in operation, it is unclear what Heartland stands for when it comes to climate change – beyond resistance to putting any kind of restraint on business.
Some people are rejoicing over this turn of events. Desmog blog announces the death of the denial palooza:
During his closing remarks at the Heartland Institute’s Seventh “International Conference on Climate Change,” Heartland President Joseph Bast revealed that the group has no plans to hold another conference and is struggling to pay its staff following the defections of corporate sponsors in the wake of the disastrous Unabomber billboard campaign and Deniergate document dump.
JC comments: I strongly agree with the following assessments:
And after nearly 30 years in operation, it is unclear what Heartland stands for when it comes to climate change – beyond resistance to putting any kind of restraint on business.
They are not built to be at the hump of the climate denial movement.
To: curryja@eas.gatech.edu
Sent: Friday, May 25, 2012 11:36:54 AM
Subject: Your post on Heartland
Dr. Curry,
Thanks for reproducing in your recent post my account of the left’s attacks on our scientists and donors. It’s a story that isn’t getting nearly enough attention in the blogosphere. I’m disappointed, though, that you also reproduced, at length and even endorsed, the lies and distortions written about us by Suzanne Goldenberg. A simple call or email to me or Jim Lakely would have given us a chance to correct her many misstatements.
I won’t ask for a correction or apology, but please understand that …
(a) Concerning ICCC-7, we set a record for the number of cosponsors (60), 12 speakers asked to speak after only 2 withdrew, and the mood was decidedly upbeat. Opponents (including “Forecast the Facts” and Occupy Wall Street) promised to disrupt the conference and failed utterly – fewer than 50 people showed up for their rallies. Those who did show up wore boots on their heads and refused Christopher Monckton’s invitation to debate.
(b) You didn’t see many new faces on the program because 50 warmists invited to speak refused to show up, and we had set aside space on the program for them. I’ve said after nearly every conference since the 3rd one that “this is probably our last conference,” and I’ve made a fundraising pitch, because the ICCCs are expensive and I suspect they are subject to the law of diminishing returns, but we keep doing them due to popular demand. Stay tuned for news about ICCC-8.
(c) Concerning Heartland’s financial health, we’ve raised more money since the Fakegate incident than in the previous 11 months, and are on track to double our income this year. We’ve doubled the number of current donors since February. With only one exception so far, the donors we’ve lost either didn’t give in 2011 (or even in 2010) or have agreed to fund spin-off organizations we are creating, such as the R Street Institute, so the result is no net loss of our effectiveness, and actually an increase.
(d) The campaign against our directors and donors being conducted by “Forecast the Facts,” 350.org, and Greenpeace – not by “anonymous individuals” as you strangely suggest – in fact is unprecedented because it could not have occurred had not Peter Gleick stolen and revealed our donor list. But we are obviously well on our way to building a new and much larger donor base that is “Greenpeace proof.”
(e) Our PR response to Fakegate has been called “brilliant” even by the folks at DesmogBlog. History will record it as another major scandal that helped bring down the man-made global warming movement. But the MSM and environmental groups doubled down on their strategic mistake, understanding that the only way to prevent Fakegate from “becoming another Climategate” is to take down Heartland and its network of scientists and donors. Their tactics compelled us to match their intensity.
(f) I am not surprised or disappointed that you and other bloggers disapprove of our tactics. It is simply not your role in the controversy to be aggressive or controversial. But it is ours.
(g) The billboard, which cost $200, generated more than $5 million in earned media so far, and that figure doesn’t include television, radio, and tens of millions of page visits and online commentaries. Was the MSM coverage overwhelmingly negative? Of course. How could it be otherwise? There has been no positive coverage of skeptics since Fakegate broke, none at all, and reporters have made it clear that they will not report the debate fairly, so there is no longer any point in trying to appeal to their ethics or honesty. Thanks to the billboard, 37 million Americans now know that the debate over climate change continues.
Please don’t hesitate to contact me or Jim Lakely if you have questions or suggestions.
Joseph Bast
judith
I consider Heartland to be irrelevant and without any strategic direction. They were also thoroughly misguided to run that unpleasant Bill board campaign. Who’s in charge and what is their purpose in life? They certainly don’t speak for me.
tonyb
None of us is perfect, Tony, and almost everyone has good intentions. Heartland performed a great service in challenging misinformation.
Vaclav Klaus and Professor Curry have it right: “the ‘plot’ is really about preserving freedom and libertarian values.
President Eisenhower saw and warned us of this potential danger to our form of government in his 1961 farewell address:
Professors Ross McKitrick and Judith Curry exhibit the patience and tolerance necessary to unravel the events that produced the emails and documents of Climategate in Nov 2009 and surprising reaction of world leaders and leaders of the scientific community since then.
In November of 2009 none suspected that Climategate emails and documents were the tip of a cancerous growth that developed out of public view on government science for sixty-four years, since
a.) A-bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945
b.) World leaders agreed to obscure nuclear energy information
c.) Established the United Nations in October of 1945 in order to:
_ i.) Unite Nations
_ ii) Promote world peace
_ iii.) End national boundaries
_ iv.) Avoid the threat of nuclear war
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-70
A-bombs confirmed Einstein’s 1905 prediction that energy (E) is stored as mass (m) and released as E = mc^2
“The mass of a body is a measure of its energy-content; if the energy changes by L,” L = E (initial) – E (final) “the mass changes in the same sense by L/(9 × 10^20), the energy being measured in ergs, and the mass in grammes.”
http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/E_mc2/www/
The agreement to obscure knowledge of energy (E) stored as mass (m) at the cores of heavy atoms (like uranium and plutonium), stars (like the Sun), and galaxies (like the Milky Way) was implemented in 1946 by publication of two papers in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS)
Fred Hoyle, “The chemical composition of the stars,” MNRAS 106, 255-59 (1946); “The synthesis of the elements from hydrogen,” MNRAS 106, 343-83 (1946)
The “Cold War” between capitalism and communism immediately after WWII ended delayed implementation of other parts of the 1945 agreements until Henry KIssinger secretly flew to China in 1971 and convinced US President Richard M. Nixon to end the space race in 1972 by canceling the Apollo Program that US President John F. Kennedy started in 1960 in response to the USSR’s launch of the Sputnik I and Sputnik II satellites on 4 Oct 1957 and 3 Nov 1957.
1957: http://history.nasa.gov/sputnik/
1960: http://library.thinkquest.org/29033/voyages/apollo.htm
1971: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10640850/Climategate_Roots.pdf
Today, “the ‘plot’ is really about preserving freedom and libertarian values.”
I.e., restoring constitutional protection of citizens’ unalienable Rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness – with access to factual information – so they can abolish any Form of Government that becomes destructive of these ends.
1776: http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/
1791:http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/BillOfRights.html
To restore those fundamental rights, “You can not simultaneously say that you want to promote a debate while equating the other side to terrorists and mass murderers.” – Professor Ross McKitrick
“What is Endangered: Climate or Freedom? There is no doubt that it is all about freedom. We should keep that in mind.” – Václav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic
Thank you, Professor Curry, for having the courage and integrity to post the e-mail response from Joseph Bast (5/25/2012) above.
Government deception has now produced almost free-fall collapse of our social and economic structures.
A majority of the ordinary citizens around here have totally lost faith in political leaders that refused to condemn deceptive government science and continued to implement the policies that destroyed our once thriving economy, guided by trusted political leaders.
These voters will not be appeased if the next election only gives them a chance to vote for one on two almost identical twins:
_ a.) Supports gay marriages
_ b.) Would ban gay marriages
As we pay tribute to citizens who made the ultimate sacrifice to preserve our freedoms this Memorial Day week-end, it is fitting to read the speech by Czech President, Václav Klaus, regarding Climategate and the threat that it poses to our most basic freedoms:
http://tinyurl.com/87qeycz
“It is evident that the current temperature data confirm neither the GWD alarmist and apocalyptic views, nor their quasi-scientific hypotheses about the exclusivity of relationship between CO2 and temperature.”
“What is Endangered: Climate or Freedom? There is no doubt that it is all about freedom. We should keep that in mind.”
– Václav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic,
21 May 2012
Again, Professor Curry, I appreciate your courage for helping the American public understand the issues.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
http://www.omatumr.com
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-70
People, people! Do you not understand that THIS is a political year – and a quadrennial presidential one in which policy direction-finding is paramount? Heartland’s tiny $6 million funding compared to Greenpeace (US alone) is $270 million. Therefore leveraging the former’s visibility during a period of increasing political polarization makes a great deal of strategic sense. As warmist blog traffic collapses, Heartland suddenly capitalizes on making new friends and cultivating new supporters, thereby widening its base of support, during a period when evidence to increasing atmospheric CO2 ought to be proving high sensitivity of the climate system. Instead, it isn’t!
Opposites attract in magnetism as in politics.
No one here seems to know that the environmental movement’s roots in fascism and totalitarian ideology, and consequent democidal evil character (which is all part of the standard environmental historical literature) – something surface celebrations like Earth Day, also Lenin’s Birthday, obscure – hiding tens of millions of dead, mostly black and brown bodies. Yet the environmental movement has never been held to account for its shocking wreackage. (SEE http://www.ecofascism.com/ FOR AN INTRODUCTION.)
Therefore, the offensiveness of the unabomber ad and the subsequent and predictable outrage only reminds me of one of Rush Limbough’s undeniable Truths about the Left: the surest way to provoke them is to simply Tell Them The Truth about their proclaimed “moral superiority:” they are anti-humanist murderers with an impressive and shocking legacy, a body count competitive with any of the 20th century’s mega-murderers through DDT proscription alone.
This is a sad yet sobering Truth – revealing these sainted “heros” as actually evil. (SEE Robert Zubrin’s “Merchants of Despair” and Bian Sussman’s “Eco-Tyranny,” and Paul Dressen’s “Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death,” just for starters.)
These fundamentally disputed values (eg, human needs versus “nature”), underlying the policy directions being contested this year in global warming policy, need airing because the disinfectant of sun light by Speaking Truth to a ,powerful but deceptive and evil-doing establishment in defense of the most powerless on the globe, is only one minimal prerequisite to choosing wisely.
It is overdue for people here to be better informed – or else continue to aid and abet evil in our time.
“Heartland’s tiny $6 million funding compared to Greenpeace (US alone) is $270 million”.
To the Greenpeace budget, add the tens of $billions that government climate science spends on alarmism.
In November of 2009 none suspected that Climategate emails and documents were the tip of a cancerous growth that developed out of public view on government science for sixty-four years, since
Not only did I suspect “the tip of a cancerous growth” I knew the thinking behind it. I grew up with it.
“Tax the rich, feed the poor. Till there are no rich no more.”
Tony,
Heartland speaks for the substantial number of skeptics who think CAGW is an ideological movement, at best, or even a hoax. Heartland is their emerging voice. The purpose is to stop the greens. The strategic direction is to channel widespread anger to get political results. (This is ideological warfare.) Joe Bast is in charge. What do you not understand?
Ironically, Heartland does not consider you irrelevant, because every skeptic counts.
David, is your opinion of Heartland at all influenced by their plan to give you a substantial amount of cash?
Perish the thought.
I’m sure David is completely objective in his expert assessment of the state of all things Heartland-ish. At the very least, it ought to be pointed out that he’s probably not as morally untethered as the Unabomber.
I do not know the Heartlanders personally. But we share the moral conviction that the Greens are a menace to society, not unlike the Unibomber, who acted on the same perverted principles.
That’s some pretty flawed logic there David.
By the same token, as you share the same “moral principles” as Heartland, we can expect you to display the same perverted judgement?
No Louise, it is not. I chose them to make my proposal to. You greens really are stupid about this, aren’t you, hopefully stupid I guess. I do not have my beliefs because people pay me.
I look for sponsors who will pay to advance my life’s work. Who doesn’t?
David,
Maybe you should seek funding from the Democrat controlled U.S. Senate, or maybe the IPCC? Look at all the funding they have provided to other skeptics.
I look forward to Louise’s next comment, questioning the objectivity of consensus scientists who seek funding from their progressive political patrons.
David,
Your and Heartland’s shared “moral conviction that Greens are a menace to society” is a wonderful bit of rhetorical puffery – and it’s about as relevant to the world of facts as Santa’s workshop at the North Pole.
”
You greens really are stupid about this, aren’t you, hopefully stupid I guess.
”
Ad hominem alert! – “You are stoopid” at 12 o’clock!!
”
I am surprised that you have not noticed the numerous angry comments here at Clmate Etc that call AGW a hoax. They reflect a substantial portion of the American people.
”
You know David – a substantial portion of the American people cannot find the Pacific Ocean on map of the world. Argument ad populum becomes particularly hilarious when portions of the America people are your experts.
Whatever Heartland pays you is clearly not enough.
Ceteris, pointing out that an argument is is stupid is not an ad hominem. You need to study up on your fallacies if you are going to allege them. An ad hominem is claiming that a statement is false because of who makes it.
In any case this recurring claim by the greens, that skeptics only say what they do because of who pays them, is in fact stupid. We are a dedicated bunch. I have been working to stop the Greens since 1968, when I recognized the irrational threat to society underlying their ideology.
Obviously stooges and shills get paid all the time. The evidence is all there. Someone was paying just yesterday $50 for people to wear T-shirts that said “America counts on coal” at an EPA meeting in Chicago
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/coal.jpg
Same goes for talk-radio shows, where people get paid to call in and spew talking-points.
People will say and do lots of things for money.
Commenter “Louise” steers right into the one tactic that has held up the AGW issue all these years – corrupted skeptics. This same tactic has every potential to sink the issue entirely, when a large enough population comprehends how baseless it has been since the start. Yes, the billboard was not something that moves the issue forward, it certainly does showcase AGWers’ enslavement to smearing the global warming critics with unsupported character assassinations, which I described in my American Thinker piece two weeks ago, “Heartland Institute ‘Unabomber billboard’ brings out Global Warming Alarmists’ One-Trick Pony” http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/05/heartland_institute_unabomber_billboard_brings_out_global_warming_alarmists_one-trick_pony.html
Russell C – you are aware that David Wojick is being paid quite a large sum of money by the Heartland Institute aren’t you? This is fact as David will agree, not spin or lies but actual fact.
Dsvid
Don’t forget I speak as someone who lives in England. Heartland may have good intentions but from my perspective on this side of the pond I take no notice of them and was dismayed by their billboard tactics. Don’t forget the trial of the Norwegian mass murderer is taking place right now in Europe and that the killer was a sceptic. Wrong tactics from my perspective but perhaps it plays well in the US.
AGW may be an ideological movement but a hoax?
tonyb
Tony, it does not surprise me that you Brits know as little about US politics as we do of yours. My understanding is that every party in Britain has gone Green, so I just write you all off. But Benny Peiser seems to be making headway, please correct me if I am wrong.
But I am surprised that you have not noticed the numerous angry comments here at Clmate Etc that call AGW a hoax. They reflect a substantial portion of the American people. The leading skeptic in America is Sen Inhofe, who has used the term hoax for a decade. I helped train his staff many years ago. He and I jointly sued NSF to stop the 2000 National Assessmesnt becoming Federal policy.
I myself do not use the term hoax, but neither do I condemn it. When people, scientists, and governments, who are perfectly aware of the uncertainties in what they are selling, refuse to acknowlege them, what better term is there? Seling ignorance as knowledge is a hoax, is it not?
David
Of course I have seen the numerous angry comments here and elsewhere that proclaim agw is a hoax. I don’t believe in agw but I don’t think it fits the criteria of a hoax, but i understand where you are coming from.
Not sure that benny is at all well known here and whilst you are right that every major party bar ukip are green ,very many of the population are angry at what is being done in their name to achieve a level of greenness we never asked for and is costing us money
Tonyb
After Wojick and his pals at Heartland stop the greens, their next step is to stop oil depletion.
They always forget that the issues are way beyond politics and have more to do with rethinking BAU.
This is such a disingenuous statement. The left has been successful at intimidating companies to the point that they have been able to cut off the funding and advertising of right-leaning shows and organizations. The last attempt was with Rush Limbaugh, but they failed at that one. The only thing the left is good at is organizing, and that has been effective in many cases. Unfortunately, once they have control, they put in place moronic, socialist-leaning policies. More than that, they have effective control of governments around the world as can be seen from the fact that those governments are pouring money into idiotic “green” initiatives while ignoring nuclear power and shale gas. The “greens” desperately need stopping, but it ain’t gonna be Heartland what does it.
It’s not a disingenuous comment, it’s a sarcastic comment on my part.
Dominionists have trouble telling the two apart.
Dominionists? You really don’t have a clue, do you WHT.
There is much to say in favor of “Business As Usual,” WHT. It has been attacked and disrupted in numerous ways by green movements that still believe in the pseudoscience of global warming but it is part of our civilization. I know that you would rather talk politics because you don’t know climate science but the fact is sooner or later you have to face the fact that greenhouse warming is a fantasy. To fill you in on it I will introduce you to relevant climate science that applies to this discussion. First, I have studied the global temperature history and come to the conclusion that there has not been any greenhouse warming at any time during the last one hundred years. I will go through it step by step. Twentieth century warming came in two spurts separated by a long period of no warming. Early twentieth century warming started suddenly in 1910, after a twenty year period of cooling. It stopped equally suddenly in 1940 just as World War Two was getting started. You need to understand some basic physics about greenhouse warming if you want to understand this warming. First of all, if you want to suddenly start greenhouse warming you must increase atmospheric carbon dioxide equally suddenly at the same time. This did not happen in 1910. And if you want to suddenly stop greenhouse warming you must reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the air equally suddenly, and this did not happen in 1940. It follows that it is impossible for the greenhouse effect to be the cause of early twentieth century warming. Bjørn Lomborg and others have suggested that this warming was caused by solar influence, part of coming out of the Little Ice Age. I agree with them. In the fifties, sixties, and seventies there was no warming while carbon dioxide steadily crept up just as it is doing now. Certainly no greenhouse effect there. So how do your greenies explain that? They invoke a world-wide aerosol blanket, started by war production, that kept carbon dioxide from doing its job for thirty years. And then, suddenly, that blanket lifted, and we got the second part of twentieth century warming called the late twentieth century warming. That is the warming that Hansen spoke of in 1988. Unfortunately satellites cannot even see this Hansen warming. And when you compare the ground-based temperature curves to satellite curves you see that they have been altered. In my book “What Warming?” figures 24, 27 and 29 demonstrate how this was done. In the eighties and nineties satellite curves show nothing but an ENSO oscillation, up and down by half a degree for twenty years, but no rise until 1998 when the super El Nino arrives. That is when the real warming starts, ten years after Hansen’s announcement. In four years it raises global temperature by a third of a degree Celsius and then stops. It is impossible for the greenhouse effect to cause such a step warming. This warming and not some imaginary greenhouse effect was the cause of the very warm first decade of our century. There has been no further warming since the step warming ended, more than ten years ago. This still leaves polar warming unaccounted for. Antarctica is in good shape even though periodic expeditions financed by a huge global warming slush fund keep trying to find possible warming there. We know that there is and has been possible undercutting of ice by upwelling warm water and that there have been periodic collapses of the ice front around the Ross Sea, starting 18000 years ago in the Pleistocene. It has absolutely nothing to do with carbon dioxide. The Arctic is warming, no doubt about it, but this also has nothing to do with carbon dioxide. What is warming the Arctic is warm water, carried north by Atlantic Ocean currents. It all started at the turn of the twentieth century when a rearrangement of the North Atlantic current system took place. Prior to that there was nothing but two thousand years of slow cooling. This was followed by a sudden warming that makes the entire Arctic temperature curve look like a hockey stick. Again, greenhouse warming is ruled out because there was no corresponding rise of carbon dioxide when the warming started. Like I said above, this survey proves the absence of any greenhouse warming within the last 100 years. But the worse news is that IPCC calculated from their greenhouse warming theory that twenty-first century warming will proceed at the rate of 0.2 degrees per decade. For your information, there is no warming now and there has not been any warming since the twenty-first century began. That means that the IPCC prediction from theory is false. In science, if a a prediction from theory is false the theory itself is considered false. Since the predicted twenty first century warming from IPCC is false it follows that the greenhouse theory used by them and all greenies is also false. Ferenc Miskolczi explains why this is so. If you really want to know the details, his 2005 paper gives the theoretical framework and his 2010 paper provides empirical observations to back it up. No peer reviewed articles opposing him have appeared . I rest my case.
I would rather talk science, but I am afraid you wouldn’t be able to keep up.
I would rather talk science, but a commenter that writes a long rambling run-on paragraph is not one I will engage with.
Nicely said Arno. I would have to disagree with Web when he says ” I would rather talk science, but I am afraid you wouldn’t be able to keep up.”
That is the typical way the lefties react. When confronted with facts they can’t argue with they resort to name calling and insults.
David
Imo there are huge risks of potential negative outcomes in your approach of supporting the addressing these topics as an “ideological movement” with the goal of stopping the “greens”.
Imo, to be opposed to the “greens” is not a productive approach. It is more productive to discuss the specific goals and to try to agree upon practical objectives that have reasonable plans for implementation.
Each of the goals of the “greens” can be reasonably discussed, evaluated and one can determine whether a solution can be implemented on a practical basis. The approach avoids the creation of us vs. them and allows the implementation of good ideas regardless of the source.
Name one such goal, Rob, at the specific policy level if possible. Is decarbonization on your list? How about reduced consumption?
David
You are a bright guy and do not really need me to provide you with a list of practices that humans have done and are doing to damage conditions that can and should be stopped.
Hunting of animals to extinction, or the dumping of massive amounts of raw wastes and acids into the oceans seem like obvious examples you would agree should me mitigated. The question is to what degree is it reasonable.
Regarding CO2 regulation, I do not have enough information to show me that mitigation actions make much sense or that the US will be harmed by a gradually warmer world
Dumping massive amounts of acids into the oceans? Seriously?
Let’s have a ;reasonable discussion’ about reducing the human population with a bunch of misanthropes.
Ermmmm [scratch chin] [examine fingernails].
Sorry I can’t do it.
There are two ‘green’ movements: 1) populist ‘green’ which reflects a century-old conservationist concern re negative impacts on the natural environment from human activities; 2) radical environmentalism which has become the replacement for Marxism as a broad and specific critique of free, capitalist societies.
The goals of the first type of green are usually laudable, though a profound ignorance of economics usually makes most of their policy recommendations drastically inefficient, if not counterproductive. The goals of the second type of green are a revolutionary make-over of society. These greens are irrational enough to realistically be called a threat to civilization. Their utopian goals require a drastic reduction in human population, human freedom, and individual wealth.
To be unaware of the differences between these flavors of green is to be dangerously uninformed. Rob, the inescapable us v. them is the divide between the first type of green, with which virtually everyone, including you, David W. and myself are in sympathy, and the revolutionaries.
A century ago, the Marxists talked about useful idiots and fellow travellers. They meant the dupes who, while not agreeing completely with the revolutionaries, yet were useful as short-term political allies because they agreed with some of the socialist critique of society. The great challenge today is to be green without being a useful idiot.
I think you misunderstand Marxism. The despair of the 1980’s when the Right under Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan bulldozed the Left drove many of them out into other things. Some became lifestyle feminists, some became Eurocrats. Some adopted the reactionary neo-mediaevalist Green campaign because at least it was confrontational and appeared anti big-business (however, look at WWF funding streams!).
Marx welcomed industrialism (while recognising the horrendous disruption to the population’s lives) because it unleashed enormous productive power and created the working class. One can see how the working conditions of the Chinese have got worse over the last 20 years but their prosperity has increased. Now, like the Japanese and S. Koreans before them, they are discovering Trades Unionism.
Being anti-Capitalist is not the same as being anti-Industrialism.
Rob, the Greens you perceive must be very different from the Greens I’ve observed, who are not amenable to constructive rational argument.
no, let us not discuss the goals.
mine is mine and you have no right to it.
stop begging and stop stealing. it is wrong and bad.
end of story.
Oh?
I seem to recall people arguing, re: Glieck, that Heartland was just interested in promoting debate about the science, not pushing any ideological barrow.
I’m shocked I tell you, just shocked.
That billboard was incredibly tame compared to some of the lefty propaganda. Have a look at this advert that ran on English TV:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0rYN0B5xNM
And truthfully answer which is worse.
Clearly the producers of this video hold the perverted, moral low ground. It has a distinctive Ted K. style about it.
Reg, you have been misinformed, the ‘ad’ never ran on English TV
tonyb,
I agree, at first I thought it was misguided and distasteful. But the more I think about it, the more I think it was spot on. You would have to be a nutter like Unabomber Ted to still believe in global warming.
Even Phil Jones, the peer reviewed scientist who heads the Climate Research Unit at UEA, has admitted that there has been no warming in the last 15 years. Yet, CO2 concentration has continued to rise. So it’s pretty clear that CO2 has little or nothing to do with global temperature.
How can any sane person still believe in these green fairy tales is beyond me.
Your claim about what Phil Jones said is inaccurate on a number of counts. First of all he’s never said anything about the last 15 years ending in 2012. The period he spoke about was 1995 to 2009.
Second he never claimed there had been no warming, he said there had been no statistically significant warming. Here are his exact words:
“I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.””
Third, about a year ago he pointed out that the warming trend since 1995 had become significant.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/phil-jones-warming-since-1995-significant.html
And of course if over a 15 year period the trend is 0.12C/decade +-0.14C/decade that is not definitely positive, but neither is it definitely negative, it could be as high as 0.26C/decade. In short it isn’t incompatible with the kind of warming rates expected from rising CO2.
First, I never said the time period that Jones was referring to, but does it really matter?
Second, If there is no statistical significant warming, then the warming is insignificant by definition, and therefore meaningless, No?
Third, Jones refuses to release his raw data (some of which he now admits he no longer has), his adjusted data, or his model so that other scientists can verify\replicate his results.
That’s not science.
Worse, taxpayers have funded this and have a right to the information, Do they not?
Lastly, what honest scientist would dodge Freedom of Information requests? Seriously?
Science, especially publicly funded science, should be transparent. Wouldn’t you agree?
“Second, If there is no statistical significant warming, then the warming is insignificant by definition, and therefore meaningless, No?”
No. A trend of 0.1C +-0.2C is not meaningless. It means there’s been anything from 0.1C cooling to 0.3C warming. Just because the error bars are so wide does not justify claiming there’s been no warming.
The fact that warming since 1995 has become significant in the last two years is a good indication that the original appeal to insignificant warming since 1995 was flawed. We now have skeptics shifting the argument to “no significant warming since 1997”. Obviously if that keeps up warming is just going to continue. There will always be a recent period in which the uncertainty range is larger than the signal.
“Third, Jones refuses to release his raw data (some of which he now admits he no longer has), his adjusted data, or his model so that other scientists can verify\replicate his results.”
Many other scientists have verified and replicated his results. Hansen at NASA GISS, Richard Muller with BEST. The NOAA with various global temperature products. Even amateurs on their blogs have verified and replicated it. How have they managed to do this if it’s impossible?
lolwot, minor correction 0.1 +/-0.2 would have a range of -0.1 to +0.3 which as an anomaly would be somewhat meaningful. The Antarctic with an average temperature of 200K degrees with polar amplification that would be a range of 199.3K to 200.9K, in the tropics with no amplification and an average temperature of 300K that would be a range of 299.9K to 300.3K. Using anomaly is great, kinda like having sex in a swimming pool, everything looks bigger :)
lolwot: :No. A trend of 0.1C +-0.2C is not meaningless. It means there’s been anything from 0.1C cooling to 0.3C warming. Just because the error bars are so wide does not justify claiming there’s been no warming.”
And it also means that the error bars are so wide that it does not justifying warming or anything else. Thanks for proving my point.
lolwot:
“Many other scientists have verified and replicated his results. Hansen at NASA GISS, Richard Muller with BEST.”
The BEST study admitted they changed\homogenized\normalized the raw data, but gave no reason why.
What’s worse they press-released the results before it was peer reviewed or the paper was even published.
Shocking!
Reg Nelson:
“And it also means that the error bars are so wide that it does not justifying warming”
at the 95% confidence level. i.e. the hypothesis of no warming is not rejected with 95% certainty from 15 years of data. 15 years of data showed something like 93% likelihood of warming and 7% likelihood of no warming, with the analysis Phil Jones used.
“The BEST study admitted they changed\homogenized\normalized the raw data, but gave no reason why.”
Yeah they did explain why and it’s justified.
ha ha – do you wear toe shoes and a tutu when you parse so delicately,. my precious?
“Prove it.“Third, Jones refuses to release his raw data (some of which he now admits he no longer has), his adjusted data, or his model so that other scientists can verify\replicate his results.”
Many other scientists have verified and replicated his results. Hansen at NASA GISS, Richard Muller with BEST. The NOAA with various global temperature products. Even amateurs on their blogs have verified and replicated it. How have they managed to do this if it’s impossible?”
Your reading comprehension is somewhat lacking.
Replicated his results from what? When has Jones, Mann or anyone else ever posted their raw data? Their adjusted data? And the reasons they adjusted it? Or the models they use to produce their graphs?
Google Climategate and FOIA, and find out how corrupt the poli-scientists are. It’s sickening.
Three simple questions: Where’s the raw data? Why did you adjust the data? And why?
Answer me that lolwot.
“Replicated his results from what? When has Jones, Mann or anyone else ever posted their raw data? Their adjusted data? And the reasons they adjusted it? Or the models they use to produce their graphs?”
The raw data is available from various websites, the methodologies and source code are published.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/#Climate_data_raw
You don’t have a clue what you are talking about. I think you are one of these political ideologues, kind of like birthers, who really want to believe a conspiracy and don’t let facts get in the way of that.
There is a 100-year supply of recoverable natural gas in the US and Canada wants pipe us energy but Aqua Budda and the Church of the Warmans say, ‘no, no, no, not drill baby drill—spend baby spend and let the people eat ice’ as the Earth cools and Canadians may have to abandon winter wheat and prepare for a return to an economy based trapping fur-bearing animals.
Speaking as a Canadian, and a fur-bearing animal, I am already prepared.
The problem of climate change is of course a lot more simple if there really was global warming. Then, all you need do is look South to see what grows best with the change in climate.
Vermont = Baffin Island + climate change
– except that Baffin has no topsoil and it’s dark for 6 months per year.
Bilge.
Entirely too much is being made by the “Liberal” fascisti in their howling objections to the simple observation that their serried ranks are replete with sociopathic murderers, Cuban and Venezuelan communists, Islamic whackjobs, and other enemies of western civilization.
In the wonderful “Unabomber” billboard, Heartland put its foot down las warmistas’ collective (and collectivist) throat. Having found themselves in this enviable position, with proof that it causes these Watermelon weasels horrible anguish because they know it’s true, the route of action involves not withdrawal and apologies but rather jumping the rest of the way down their figurative gullet and kicking their guts out.
No prisoners. Pursue them to their destruction.
The aggressive tactics against CO2 and the economy show that the EPA is an anti-business, Leftist enabler dedicated to a hard-line takeover of US energy and industry. EPA global warming alarmism is evidence of a moral Kristallnacht that is clear as the sound of glass shattering. As Western civilization falls remember who the Left says is the enemy: liberal fascists always choose those who don’t fire back.
“Entirely too much is being made by the “Liberal” fascisti in their howling objections to the simple observation that their serried ranks are replete with sociopathic murderers, Cuban and Venezuelan communists, Islamic whackjobs, and other enemies of western civilization.”
Again, a great way to encourage thoughtful, reasoned discussion.
This is a problem on both sides of the aisle. Drop the labels intended to inflame and increase the knowledge exchange.
The Fire-Ready-Aim C02 policy of EPA science authoritarians is a dramatic realization of self-defeating liberal fascist bureaucracy at work. Secular socialist Big Gov-EPA anti-energy bureaucrats and their comrades have turned the corner to communism and it’s all downhill from here.
a perfect example… thank you
Paradoxically the Green Gas of the Left flows from capitalism’s freedom and plenty as the polar opposite of the founders respect for individual liberty. The aim of Leftist Big Government bureaucracy and EPA energy policy is to criminalize the practice of productive free enterprise capitalism.
At 12:57 PM on 24 May, JayTee objects to accurate taxonomy in the categorization of the “Liberal” fascisti pushing the preposterous bogosity of the great crippled conjecture we know as the AGW fraud, whining:
Batpuckey.
As if those of us sensible, honest, scrupulously skeptical examiners of this question have had anything in the way of “thoughtful, reasoned discussion” from the flagrantly lying “We’re All Gonna Die!” power-grabbing Alinskyite warmista sons of canine parentage who’ve been pushing this carload of reeking crap for the past thirty-odd years?
There is not “a problem on both sides of the aisle.” We’re pursuing scientific method with the objective of elucidating verifiable facts of reality and theoretical explanations honestly congruent with those facts. These “Green on the outside/ Red to the core” statist rip-off artists are liars with intellectual and moral integrity indistinguishable from what prevails among los narcotrafficantes in Sinaloa.
Which latter – by way of Operation Fast & Furious – is also subsidized by U.S. taxpayer dollars.
To noise with spectacular indifference about any sort of methodological or moral equivalence between honest skeptics and lying Watermelons does such violence to the concept of morality itself that it is beneath contempt.
On the the contrary. When the “labels” fit, when they point out just how loathsome, just how evil, just how rotten these AGW fraudsters are and have always been, there should be no holding back, no restraint, no respite.
Hammer the message home, keep hammering, and never let up.
When the popular perception of these “Never let a crisis go to waste” leftist pseudoscientists is such that they find themselves at risk of physical assault whenever and wherever they show themselves in public, we can slack off.
Not until.
I’m not 100% sure, but I think threats of physical harm to climate scientists are a violation of blog policy…
At 3:35 PM on 24 May, BillC maunders:
Your censoring sniveling notwithstanding, the efficacy of ever more vigorous critique of the flagrant moral (as well as intellectual) bankruptcy of las warmistas might be best assessed by virtue of how the general populace receives them, when these “cork-screwing, back-stabbing, and dirty dealing” flim-flam men cease being accorded solemn nods of donkey respect for their “peer-reviewed” concerted duplicities and start running like hell from angry mobs bent upon treatments involving hot tar and poultry offal.
Think of our purpose not as encouraging the immediate infliction of “physical harm” upon these charlatans masquerading as “climate scientists” but rather making so pikestaff plain their fraudulence and malicious intentions that the average citizen perceives them as the perpetrators of actions which are such clear and present dangers to civil order, the common weal, and individual human rights as to warrant the same vigilant regard in which the average citizen holds the convicted serial rapist or tax assessor.
I’m reading lots of words there, but little reason (and it’s a bit tiresome). You are proving my point. You have assumed that anyone that disputes the ‘skeptical’ version of climate science is ‘leftist’ and ‘socialist’. That is as silly as assuming that anyone who embraces it is ‘conservative’. Hurling insults at ‘the other side’ will only further polarize the discussion and make people less willing to listen to the rational voices on both sides of the true scientific debate.
Mistaking me for a “conservative,” we have at 3:47 PM on 24 May Jay Tee pleading for the defenders of individual human rights to stay their hands in resistance to manifestly invidious lying leftie-luser ‘viro authoritarians, conceding irresponsibly to these predatory graspers a courtesy they themselves never manifest in public discourse with those of us who simply speak for the rule of law in civil governance and the preservation of the industrial civilization upon which the preponderance of the human race depends for life itself.
I think it’s worthwhile at this point to ask Jay Tee just what the hell is his motive for such restraint in dealings with the Watermelons.
So thoroughly gone in corruption and infamy are these fasisti that talk of what might or might not “polarize the discussion and maket [these enemies of humanity] less willing to listen” is contemptibly fatuous at best, and the potential manifestation of enemy propaganda more probably.
Figurative speaking (heavens, we don’t want to be censored, do we?), the recipe goes: Knock them down. Kick them until they quit moving. Check for breathing. Repeat.
It is shocking that homicidal fantasies like Tucci78’s are becoming sufficiently well-accepted — even normative — within skeptical circles, as to pass without condemnation or even notice.
Well Tucci78 is regarded as high entertainment by many of the regulars here. Not so much accepting his sentiments, as being entertained by his presentation of them.
Judith, please let suggest that you (and Climate Etc. readers) review the scientific literature realting to violent fantasy and dangerousness.
Summary: Homicidal fantasies, repeatedly and publicly expressed, are reasonable grounds for serious concern.
At 10:07 on 24 May, A fan of [suppressing] discourse continues his pseudopsychological ranting about this, your humble respondent, to appeal for the censorship of what he is terrified to address, whining:
The fact that no “Liberal” fascist wants to confront in open discourse is that everything he and his co-conspirators wish to do to inoffensive, innocent people desirous only of living their lives in peace and freedom is fundamentally and inescapably violently aggressive.
Every “There Oughtta Be a Law!” impulse on the part of these vicious meddlers relies upon government employees – in one way or another – pointing guns at people and killing as many of them as necessary pour encourager les autres.
Remember that quote from one of the “Liberals'” great heroes – Mao Zedong:
A fan of [suppressing] discourse not only wants political power, for himself and his faction but he wants the muzzle of that gun pointed at you personally, reader, at your peaceable neighbors, at your children and other relatives, at the folks who grow your food and serve your other needs, at inoffensive complete strangers, and at generations yet to come.
Who’s the guy sweating and straining to make his “violent fantasy” a reality?
The fellow speaking to the individual human being’s right to self-defense in the face of arbitrary and unlawful authority, or the clown that’s pushing a scheme of aggressive violence made pervasive and utterly tyrannical?
Tucci78’s pompous and nearly unreadable prose does nothing to advance arguments on either side of the question. They just serve to inflame ,although I don’t think there is enough logic or sanity there to worry about. I wonder… Is Tucci78 channeling Glen Beck?
OK… Time to stop feeding the troll.
Incapable of substantive reply (how surprising!), at 11:40 PM on 24 May we have JayTee resorting to equally pointless literary criticism, fumbling:
Aw, ain’t that cute? The pitiful little Watermelon is obsessed with Glen Beck. Yet another leftie-luser who thinks I’m a “conservative.” Tsk.
You can tell when a “Liberal” fascist comes as close to honesty as he’s capable, and that’s when he runs squealing for the exit, all pretenses of “logic or sanity” – much less literacy – abandoned at last in the light of his exposure.
Deeds are often preceeded by words. Even if the speaker isn’t the perp, there is a certain role played by making such things an acceptable part of the discourse.
Good to see that Judith finds these allusions to pyhsical violence entertaining, when her some of her colleagues around the world are being subject to direct threats and intimidation for doing their jobs.
At 11:45 PM on 24 May, Michael (whom we may safely presume is a “Liberal” and therefore an enemy of individual human rights) weasels:
A simple lesson for a manifestly simple person, Michael:
(1) Each human being is an individual entity, and survives only on the basis of action guided by reasoned thought (either his own or that of his caregivers).
(2) In order to take such action in the presence of other human beings, the guidance of “individual rights” was developed, which accords each individual the unalienable recognition of that person’s moral authority to dispose of his life, his liberties of action, and his property as he sees fit, as long as he does not infringe on the precisely equal rights of others in these same regards.
(3) To preserve these rights against violent aggression, the individual has of necessity the right in morality and law to use deadly force (and the instruments of deadly force) in defense and retaliation.
What las warmistas propose – without statistically significant evidence of actual harm caused by anthropogenic CO2, mind you – in terms of statutes and regulations limiting the emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is the perpetration of violent aggression under the wholly spurious guise of “law” against the property rights, the liberties, and even the lives of innocent human beings.
If the victims of this aggression respond – in self-defense – with deadly force to protect their rights against Watermelon viciousness, who initiated the violence?
Got a mirror, Michael?
If you look up “self parody” the dictionary you’ll find pages of Tucci78’s prose. All of it incomprehensible.
At 12:16 AM on 25 May, the entity posting as “Steven Mosher” pretends that he has any familiarity at all with any product of the lexicographer’s art, burbling:
…thereby with wonderful and abject gormlessness demonstrating that he’s not merely illiterate and pointless but – while posting on the World Wide Web, a portal to volumes of information previously beyond a researcher’s wildest dreams – too shiftless to simply open a browser window to a search engine when he encounters terms and concepts of which he has no understanding.
Swine, meet pearls. Pearls, prepare to be ignored.
Hey there Tucci78, sorry if you thought I was lumping you in with the conservatives. I don’t see where I made that statement. I also don’t see where and when I identified myself as a leftist. I did, perhaps, characterize you as a pompous propagator of purple (and poison) prose. I believe that skill is well represented across the political spectrum though.
Giving up for now and bowing to your ludicrous loquaciousness.
At 12:28 AM on 25 May, JayTee writes:
The language and the literature are there to be used. When I write to order and client specification, I follow the old dictum (“Talent does what it can, genius does what it must, and I do what I get paid to do”).
If I ain’t getting paid to write, it’s to my own pleasure, and in this world of “Liberal” fascists and religious whackjob “conservatives” – as per Dr. Rothbard – “Hatred is my muse.”
As for marking yourself in “leftist” stigmata, without any supported and therefore valid evidence of statistically significant adverse planetary climate change effected by way of the preposterous premise first foisted upon the world by Trenberth and his fellow charlatans more than thirty years ago, anybody who pushes this normative “carbon pollution” crap is ipso facto a government-aggrandizing leftie-luser intent upon the violation of the lives, liberties, and property of innocent human beings to no objectively mensurable public benefit whatsoever.
Haven’t any of you Watermelons even heard of the expression “Primum non nocere”?
And that includes the Etch-a-Sketch, whom the Red Faction’s “establishment” (I’m old enough to remember when we used to call ’em “Rockefeller Republicans”) are striving to ram up the national cloaca in the same way they suppository’d the 2008 elections with Crash Test Johnnie McCain.
Never in the field of human pontification was so little said with so many words and such incoherence.
It’s like reading former denizen Rich Matarese. Lots of bile, lots of adjectives, little coherence.
At 1:18 AM on 25 May, all puffed (and bloated) about scrambling frantically in the Intertubes to find my True Name, the contemptible wannabe extortionist GaryM conceives idiotically that he’s counted some kinda coup by flaunting his “Liberal” fascist hatefulness before all and sundry in a pointless puking of his feeble bile with:
*Yawn!* Talk about the banality of evil. WordPress peculiarities oblige me to employ an old ekename, and this noodge thinks I’m trying to sockpuppet. Wotta maroon.
Jeez, how much time and effort did it take this feeb to dig out this datum? And to what possible purpose, with what relevance, and with what possible utility even in accomplishing his obvious desire to intimidate somebody whom he hates as a voice in consistent support of the individual human rights GaryM appears to be intent upon violating?
Dr. Curry, might I suggest that GaryM has just breached the policies of your Web site? I don’t personally give a damn about this kind of vacuous viciousness, but it might have a chilling effect on other people whose personal character GaryM is bent upon assassinating.
Ah, so I was right. It’s old Rich “cut and paste” Matarese.
Hi Rich.
At 3:04 AM on 25 May, GaryM yelps in Kindergarten exultation:
The phrase is more appropriately “quote for reference” (threads on these WordPress sites tend to get tangled to such extents that it’s not always possible to discern who’s replying to do what, with which, and to whom).
Inasmuch as I make use of the same practice however I comment, there ain’t no feat of detectival derring-do involved in making such a connection.
By the bye, my apologies for jumping you over the implied motive for your noisemaking. Never attribute immediately to malice what might as well be explained by silliness.
Nonetheless, such jiggery-pokery would serve to disconcert somebody who was actually fearful of IRL retaliation, and it’s a practice I have deliberately eschewed. Who the guy is matters not a goddam bit compared against what he’s writing.
“On the Internet,” after all, it’s not just that “nobody can tell you’re a dog,” but also that nobody should care.
Unless, of course, our Kenyan Keynesian is hankering for a change in his diet from wagyu beef to “How Much is That Doggie in the Window?”
And I didn’t scramble at all. I’d recognize your Cornell West meets Cotton Mather “prose” anywhere.
Tucci78.
Oh dear, the problem Tucci old boy is that I am schooled in lexicography. One of the hazards of spending far too many years in literature and linguistics. Had any of your turgid prose crossed my desk I can tell you that precious little of it would have survived the blue pencil.
At 3:28 AM on 25 May, the critter posting as “steven mosher” snots:
Yeah, sure. And if you flap your arms really hard, I betcha you can jump off a fifty-foot cliff and float like a thistledown to the bog below. Why don’tcha give it a try?
The only way you get an editorial pencil on any prose of mine, putzie, is under contract with terms of payment fixed in advance. All things considered, I think a retainer is warranted, too.
Pony up and we’ll set some specifications, first among which is that I refuse to have my name – heck, my online ekename – associated with anything that goes out under your nominal authorship.
I’ll fork manure readily enough, but I don’t want it tracked into my office.
oi don’t be mean to Tucci78 he just needs a little love!
Tucci78 – “…perpetration of violent aggression under the wholly spurious guise of “law” against the property rights, the liberties, and even the lives of innocent human beings.
If the victims of this aggression respond – in self-defense – with deadly force to protect their rights against Watermelon viciousness, who initiated the violence? ”
Change ‘rights/liberties’ to ‘environment’ and what’s the difference between this and the Unabombers manifesto?
Not a great deal I’d suggest.
Extreme actions start with extreme thougths.
I assume this is the same Tucci78?
So it’s not all just hysterical anti-Green hate-speech, then?
Got some handy opinions on hand-guns, too, it seems.
I’m glad you’re all so apparently relaxed about all this and ‘entertained by his presentation’.
JC SNIP
waaaaaaaay off topic
At 6:04 AM on 25 May, sputtering leftie-luser lawless obamaphile bill quotes a post of mine on another Web site in which I correctly observed that our Kenyan Keynesian has never legally restored his name to “Barack Hussein Obama II” after having become a citizen of the Republic of Indonesia – under the name “Barry” Soebarkah – when he’d been adopted by “Lolo” Soetoro in his early childhood years.
This action in law had, of course, voided whatever claim to U.S. citizenship might have been conferred by our Mombasa Messiah’s birth – wherever it had happened – as the illegitimate offspring of a bigamous union between red-diaper baby Stanley Ann Dunham and her already-married “husband,” Kenyan socialist thug Barack Hussein Obama (I).
Note that bill does not contest this statement of plain fact regarding out Illegal-Alien-in-Chief’s actual legal name and status as a citizen of Indonesia. Shall we also echo congressional Rep. Allen West’s straightforward desire to ask our Kenyan Keynesian “What passport did you use to go to Pakistan in 1981?”
It could not have been a U.S. passport because diplomatic relations between these United States and Pakistan were badly strained in 1981. Private citizens of our country were not permitted to visit Pakistan as tourists. However, Indonesia (the most populous Islamic nation on the planet) had excellent relations with the government in Islamabad, meaning that Indonesian citizen Soebarkah (or whatever alias he was using in 1981) could have no problem entering into Pakistan and traveling about among his co-religionists.
Tsk. Poor bill. Such a head-up-the-cloaca “Liberal” fascist that when confronted by facts contrary to his devoutly embraced mythos, all the poor yutz can do is bleat: “See? See?”
As for my supported opinion on tools for the responsible human being’s exercise of the right to self-defense (again from a Web site other than this one), the pitiful bill squeals like the typical inadequately medicated neurotic hoplophobe over the news of a double-barreled .45 ACP semiautomatic handgun being marketed by Arsenal Firearms.
Learning about the gadget tickled the hell out of me. “Two-gun mojo” you can hold in one hand? Jeez, what’s not to like?
Unless, of course, you’re a “Liberal” like poor bumbling bill, in which case you do most devoutly want to make sure that your victims are disarmed and helpless.
There’s the perpetual conundrum of the leftie-luser. Is a critter like bill incapable of reasoned discourse because he’s a “Liberal” fascist, or is he a “Liberal” fascist because he hasn’t got the sense an average hardware manufacturer builds into the proverbial doorknob?
================
Note to Dr. Curry: This “bill” character can go massively off-topic in drawing a quote from a comment of mine posted on another Web site entirely and my direct response to his noise gets snipped as “waaaaaaaay off topic,” does it?
Give it another look and reconsider.
Bill’s post (above) has documented a sustained pattern of Tucci78 posts that are delusional, homicidal, and fire-arm linked. Regarding these posts as “high entertainment” amounts to accepting this behavior as normative in scientific debate.
Common-sense, the sobering history of ideology-driven homicidal violence, and the existing scientific literature, all strongly indicate that policies that tolerate this type of post as merely “high entertainment” are short-sighted, harmful to public discourse, and even dangerous.
At 11:29 on 25 May, A fan of [“Liberal” fascist propaganda] displays the crippling hoplophobia typical of such authoritarian “milk-and-water socialists,” squealing senselessly about a reference made by yet another leftie-luser to a comment of mine on an entirely different Web site in which I’d expressed my delight over a news item about Arsenal Firearms’ new double-barreled version of John Moses Browning’s superb M1911 (.45 ACP) semiautomatic pistol.
Not a practical weapon to my personal tastes and needs (I wouldn’t buy or carry such an implement unless I were to live much closer to the shop of my favorite gunsmith, as Arsenal’s design looks as if it might could have some teething problems), but it’s a neat notion. As I’d written earlier, “Two-gun mojo” a fella can hold in one hand? What’s not to tickle the fancy?
Like most such critters of predatory political intent, A fan of [“Liberal” fascist propaganda] burbles his impoverished fantasies about how awful-horrible-mean-nasty-unconscionable he conceives to be the notion of merrily articulate defenders of individual human rights even talking about the ingenuity and convenience of handsome instantiations of the armorer’s art in firearms designed for personal self-defense against aggressors bent upon the violation of individual human beings’ rights to their lives, their liberties, and their property.
Why this kind of speech should move somebody like A fan of [“Liberal” fascist propaganda] to scream for censorship, of course, may be reliably inferred, and it is inevitable that honest men and women reading here should draw such inferences.
As los warmistas keep yammering, there’s that “precautionary principle” to be kept in mind.
In so doing – regrettably – such honest folk should necessarily look upon A fan of [“Liberal” fascist propaganda] in much the same way that one regards the sorts of stuff one scrapes disgustedly from one’s shoe, but what the heck….
Pertinent unto that valuation, I find it truly wonderful to read A fan of [“Liberal” fascist propaganda] yelping about “the sobering history of ideology-driven homicidal violence” when the 20th Century is a hundred years’ worth of mass murder systematically undertaken by his dirigiste socioeconomic fellow ideologues, whereas I’m just a guy speaking mildly and temperately the plain facts about the necessity of the individual human being – in a world made deadly and degraded by “Liberal” fascists – to exercise diligently his unalienable right to keep and bear arms in a responsible and conscientious manner.
Remember, folks, always be aware not only of your target, but also of all other objects downrange. You are not always assured of sinking every round into the “X” ring (there’s a reason for the “double-tap”), and even so many projectiles can easily pass through a “Liberal” fascist completely, for we must remember that such critters are for the greatest part hot air and liquid excrement, “short-sighted, harmful to public discourse, and even dangerous.”
Tucci.
You dont seem to understand how a conditional clause works.
Let me explain it to you slowly.
If your prose had crossed my desk, it would not have survived the blue pencil.
You cannot logically respond to this by asserting that you would never let your prose cross my desk. That is not the issue.
If you jump off the building, you will hurt yourself. You dont respond to this sentence by arguing that you would never jump of the building. That is not the point of the sentence. You might say “what if I have a parachute?” or
“what if there is a giant air bag?”
I know that you would never to consent to have your prose cross my desk. The same way you know enough not to jump of a building. The outcome is clear to you, you avoid the obvious danger. And you know exactly how bad some of your prose is. You know those points where you overreach, where you throw in one to many adjectives. That’s your principle stylistic failing. It’s that extra attention you pay to laddelling on the lexical lard that tells us the emotion you express is false. It actually works to dull the outrage you seek to inflame.
at 11:48 AM on 25 May, somebody styling himself “Steven Mosher” makes yet another mistake, asserting without support (or even the semblance of reason that I…
Nah. If my prose had crossed your desk in submission for publication, it would only have done so because you personally had paid – through the nose at my highest rates – in cash, certified check, or money order – beforehand for the privilege of receiving it.
That, by the way, is a “conditional clause,” recapitulating my earlier partial stipulation of the terms under which I’d let you mess with something I write.
Another condition articulated, of course, was that when you publish it over your own byline (whatever in hell your appellation actually is), I am not to be named as complicit in whatever abomination you’re intent upon perpetrating.
I’ve ghostwritten for other people who can neither think nor write, and by the looks of you, there’s such condition writ large in your persona. However, as I put it earlier, though I’m perfectly willing to fork manure if I’m paid to my satisfaction for such work, I certainly don’t want it tracked into my office afterwards.
GaryM | May 25, 2012 at 1:18 am |
Tucci is making a lot more sense than, say, Bart, for example.
jim2 | May 26, 2012 at 8:29 am |
Who am I to compete with Rich Matarese?
After all, he’s professionally ghostwritten for Ron Paul.
I don’t pretend to such august qualifications as an entertainment. For that, I’d need a fez, a colorful little vest, a tin cup and a banana.
Recognizing his innate and hapless inferiority, at 5:23 PM on 27 May, we have Bart R confessing:
…and reinforcing the message by fumbling into abject error to claim that:
Heavens to Bettsy, but ain’t that just like Bart R in blithering gormlessness? I’ve ghostwritten a bunch for various other colleagues (the average medical doctor not being able to string words in a row to save his life), but my sole personal encounter with Dr. Paul was at a convention about a quarter-century ago, and that conversation lasted only about an hour.
The medical stuff took ten minutes, and the rest of the time was spent on Austrian School economics. He came into it via Ludwig von Mises, and I started reading on the subject by way of Henry Hazlitt. (Think Harrison’s Textbook of Medicine versus The Washington Manual.) Ron Paul really is the smartest guy in the room; let there be no doubt about it.
But back to poor, limping Bart R, who whines:
…succumbing to l’esprit d’escalier a moment later with:
And yet, of course, even that pitiful effort on Bart R‘s part at the simulation of reasoned discourse would necessitate Bart R‘s unwarranted promotion to membership in one of the primate species, when all who know and love him regard him correctly as something more musteline in his nature and capacities.
.. and of course an organ-grinder repeating the same highly stylized tune mechanically and without any skill.
My mistake, Dr. Matarese. I was reading http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/12/the-story-behind-ron-pauls-racist-newsletters/250338/ not long ago, so when you mentioned “I’ve ghostwritten for other people who can neither think nor write,”, given your frequent past Münchausenist regalings of your longstanding relationship with Dr. Paul and the stylistic similarities of the ghostwritten passages cited, it seemed a logical surmise.
So long as this ghost-writing you do for other doctors is done with their awareness, and not on a prescription pad, I’m sure the quality and volume produced is worth every penny. Egads, but if they agree in advance to pay by the syllable, they’ll go broke soon enough.
What a silly waste of electrons this sub-thread is…
In times past, this whole repartee would have been recorded on a few pieces of parchment or paper, and then been lost to rot and decay.
Now this stuff is broadcast at some cost of electricity, and will be perpetuated at some further cost of electricity.
Profligate progress.
Blog Rules
No ad hominem attacks, slurs or personal insults. Do not attribute motives to another participant.
Snarkiness is not appreciated here; nastiness and excessive rudeness are not allowed.
Don’t grind your personal axes by filling up the comments with extensive posts that are not deemed relevant or interesting in the context of blog objectives.
May 24, 2012 at 9:23 pm
Tucci78 is regarded as high entertainment by many of the regulars here.
You made a funny.
Since some “outing” is going on, Tucci, you might want to note that the “Fan” has been revealed on WUWT to be none other than “A physicist” who plagued and polluted so many discussions.
I think you are taking the right approach, Tucci78. Call a moron a moron.
At 3:01 PM on 25 May, Jim2 admonishes:
On the basis of correct clinical terminology, I have to differ. The term “moron” belongs to a relatively archaic system of classification in psychiatry which signifies:
Can we insult honest, relatively high-functional people suffering mental impairment through no fault of their own by using such a descriptor in discussion of these gun-grabbing authoritarian fraudulence-pushing warmista “transnational progressive” (Tranzi) enemies of humanity?
Admittedly, they each show proof of being a few paddles and a net short of a useable ping pong set, but I suggest that it is their moral deficiencies upon which the greatest part of our attentions should be focused.
Like most primary care guys, I’ve had honest, decent morons as patients over the decades, and for the most part they’re emotionally far more stable and intellectually a boatload better capable of reasoned thought than are these cesspits of the left who keep poisoning the aquifer of public discourse in our republic.
I was thinking of “call a spade a spade,” but I had some reticence due to the race-mongers.
So calling Ralph Nadar’s research in the the carcinogenic potential of cleansers containing silica moronic would be a compliment?
Tucci78,
I think I owe you two cents, where can I send the cheque?
Payment in full for all your posted prose.
At 1:25 PM on 26 May, bob droege magnificently demonstrates the subjective value perceived by swine regarding pearls cast before them.
Fortunately, his Britspeak (“cheque”) reveals that he does not physically pollute the conduct of life in our republic, so we need regard him as no more than a foreign fart in the great global climate.
Your pearls come not from oysters, but from your intellectual persuits, that remind me of a certain ZZ Top song about pearls.
Still not worth a brass farthing, where can I send the check, comprendez vous?
Anyone who puts liberal and fascist next to each other in a sentence clearly doesn’t understand either political viewpoint and needs to go back to political science one oh one and start over.
Really, you are just insulting the fascists.
Really Dr. C? The Guardian? WHat do you expect them to be saying?
They’re not “reporting” on this so-called battle, they’re fighting it.
That said, Heartland has made mistakes, no question about it. And The Guardian is out there asserting with a straight face that the heroic Gleick has exposed HI”s nefarious plot to “instill doubts” in the minds of the young about the reality of “climate change.” Of course they’re forgetting that document was forged, very likely by P.G. himself.
I should just ignore this stuff. Not good for my blood pressure.
If you read the green Guardian stories carefully you will see that Heartland actually picked up some new, heavy duty sponsors. Heartland may have just emerged as the counter to Greenpeace, which has a combined global budget of over $100 million a year. I am sure Joe Bast would be happy with that.
That the lukewarmers are aghast is irrelevant, as they are not Heartland’s constituency. Heartland has always been angry and anger is the political motif of the day. This is ideological warfare.
Level-headed analysis as usual David. I sometimes get lost in all the side-show stuff, mostly because I foolishly allow me emotions to get involved.
PG, There is a great Canadian musical named “Billy Bishop Goes to War.” Usually just 2 guys and a piano. One of the songs is titled “War is not a place for deep emotion.” I recommend it.
Excellent.
Money. Warfare. Joe Bast happy.
For a second there, I mistakenly thought you were talking up science.
No ceteris, this attack on Heartland (and me) is not about science. Not at all. I am surprised you cannot see that.
It certainly showed that Heartland is nothing about science….if that wasn’t already clear.
David Wojick
Angry politics is poison to good science. Please focus on the latter when working out the K-12 science material, OK?.
Not to worry, Blue. My scied stuff will be wonderously apolitical. My message will be to ignore the debate and let science do its work. Children should not participate in a debate which scientists themselves cannot resolve, right?
Huh??
Weren’t you saying just a few weeks ago that the whole purpose was to highlight the ‘fact’ that there was a debate?
David,
I hate to inject a morsel of humility into this thread – but I think you are already “letting science do its work”.
It’s not as though you ever stopped it in the first place…
Problem is, an they’re learning, that once you sacrifice the lukewarmer constituency for the angry constituency, you give up most of your scientific credibility.
They’d have been smarter to do like the left does, and create a shell game network of subsidiaries (Realclimate still claims not to be in the thrall of their Fenton masters) to handle all the nasty stuff. This was just poor planning and execution to do this honestly and openly under their brand.
Even if everything on the billboards is true.
At 4:49 PM on 24 May, P.E. had fallaciously asserted:
Nonsense. If there is any integrity – of any kind – in “the lukewarmer constituency,” they must be appraised of the moral odiousness as well as the incontrovertible methodological rottenness of las warmistas. There is in fact nothing in “the lukewarmer constituency” to which honest human beings can appeal unless and until these willful ignoramuses get jerked into sharp confrontation with factual reality.
As long as their attitude is anything like “Yeah, global warming – or is it climate change this week again? – might be due to evil-bad-horrible- nasty-selfish man-made carbon dioxide…” They are screwed. We might as well treat the silly sods as such.
Keep up the calm and reasoned appeal to these temporizing twits in “the lukewarmer constituency” if that floats the ice cream in your cup of coffee, but exercise the hell out of “the angry constituency” with all the vigor and intellectual ammunition you can provide.
Bear in mind the words of political economist (and libertarian) Murray Rothbard, who – when asked what inspired him to produce the tremendous volume of vehement and effective scholarly critique of Keynesianism and similar handwaves to cloak dirigisme in a simulacrum of legitimacy – replied:
lol your opening sentences are essentially
“PURGE THE DISBELIEVERS”
At 8:38 PM on 24 May, lolwot gropes desperately and with spectacular futility to evade address of my argument in support of dealing with las warmistas with maximum effectiveness by bleating:
Nope. More like “Shove the idiots’ noses in their own crap to help them to an accurate appreciation of what they’ve been dumping on the living room rug.”
If “the lukewarmer constituency” is amenable to appeal by way of reasoned argument – and I certainly have my doubts about that, for reasons anyone except one of these vapid folk by now know and acknowledge as valid – they require the equivalent of a substance abuser’s “intervention” to induce in them confrontation with the facts of their addiction to invidious bloody nonsense.
Care to sit down and get schooled yourself, lolwot?
I promise you, no purgatives unless we’ve got to run a colonoscope up to your ileocecal valve.
I guess I just wasn’t expecting such a tirade against lukewarmers. I mean everyone (reasonable) accepts CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that more CO2 = more warming and that’s where lukewarmers sit in the middle.
So I am curious what your position is on the science itself. I wonder if you push new boundaries on the science too. Perhaps you go beyond sky dragons? There’s still room, I’ve never yet met someone who denies the existence of the CO2 molecule for example..
At 9:03 PM on 24 May, recognizing that he’s got not a hound’s chance in hell here, lolwot whimpers:
Bull. The fact that the “lukewarmers” refuse to confront in their contemptible weaseling is whether or not anthropogenic atmospheric carbon dioxide is a statistically significant causative factor in dangerously adverse global climate change – not whether or not it’s “a greenhouse gas” but whether or not it has a deleterious effect upon planetary average temperatures such that violently aggressive government thuggery to compel reduction in those emissions is justified.
If the answer to that simple goddam question is not “Yes,” then the “lukewarmers” are flaming idiots, and deserve nothing but treatment as such. Returning to lolwot:
Bah. I’ve made my “position…on the science itself” plain for years in this forum and elsewhere, and it’s sufficiently congruent with that of regular denizen Jeff Glassman that you can review his postings here as well as his other statements available online.
I’m firmly convinced that there is no science whatsoever supporting the “crippled conjecture” (credit Dr. Glassman) of anthropogenic global warming, there having been neither evidence-based support for this preposterous bogosity nor sound methodology in las fraudulence-pushing warmistas‘ public promulgations of their errors and bloody lies.
There is no “room” whatsoever when it comes to determining how government employees will exercise the police power in civil society to the supposed benefit – or actual detriment – of real, live human beings.
Am I making this sufficiently clear to you and your co-religionists, lolwot, or do you need the lesson hammered home more explicitly?
You say there’s no science whatsoever for anthropogenic global warming, but of course there is. Sharply rising CO2 – and other greenhouse gases have a very significant warming effect.
Even the low sensitivity guys like Spencer and Lindzen still peg the rise in CO2 as going to cause more than the total warming of the 20th century. So the idea that man has a puny influence is incorrect even according to the skeptic scientists.
There are also other impacts such as ocean acidification of course, and other greenhouse gases rising too.
I don’t know what you mean by “deleterious effect upon planetary average temperatures”, but the issue really is one of sharp and unusual change. Sharp and unusual change in perspective of geological time.
No-one knows when or even if CO2 has ever risen as fast as it’s doing today. The direct impacts on global temperature etc as discussed above are fairly well accepted. The uncertainty in the science means some truely high end amounts of warming are possible – afterall without certainty we cannot rule out the worse case scenarios.
Impacts are not fully understood. That’s the chilling thing. Earth is going through a very rapid significant change and no-one is fully sure of the consequences. There are many systems in the world linked to temperature and the carbon cycle. It’ll be “interesting” to see what unfolds.
In short the issue is one of risk not certainty. There is a credible danger – one of a massive scale – and it’s an issue that therefore weighs in the policy arena as people try to figure out how to mitigate the threat. First of all people look at reductions in CO2 emissions so that CO2 doesn’t quite jump so sharply. Adaptations work well for some of our stuff – like sea defenses and suchlike, but a lot of the natural world has to adapt itself with no guarantee how much of it will succeed.
At 10:04 PM on 24 May, we get the lolwot babbling his horror that I’ve said …there’s no science whatsoever for anthropogenic global warming, but of course there is. Sharply rising CO2 – and other greenhouse gases have a very significant warming effect.
Meaning, of course, that this Watermelon is utterly unprepared to discuss (or even demonstrate the concept of) evidence-based statistical significance in any relationship between the continuing acceleration of the Keeling curve data and global average temperatures.
Of which there is the most thoroughgoing disconnect imaginable, meaning that lolwot‘s precautionary principle whining is – like bloody everything else about his noise here – without substance and void.
IF “There is a credible danger – one of a massive scale – and it’s an issue that therefore weighs in the policy arena as people try to figure out how to mitigate the threat,” then there really must be proof so solid that nobody prepared to recommend incredibly costly violently aggressive government action to punish private citizens for the crime of releasing CO2 into the atmosphere could possibly hold that “the issue is one of risk not certainty,” right?
Otherwise you goddam Watermelons wouldn’t be proposing to send armed government goons to inflict definite injury, poverty, and other suffering on real, live innocent human beings on the basis of nothing more than “risk not certainty,” would you?
Jeez, I endorse the common sense of self-defense against government thuggery imposed by las warmistas without so much as the courtesy of honest public debate and these aggressors complain about my observation that it might well come down to the use of deadly force to oblige these ‘viro authoritarian fascisti to keep their megalomania under check.
“Meaning, of course, that this Watermelon is utterly unprepared to discuss (or even demonstrate the concept of) evidence-based statistical significance in any relationship between the continuing acceleration of the Keeling curve data and global average temperatures.”
I am prepared to discuss anything, for fun or to learn more! Well except politics, politics is kind of boring. Science is great though! I like science a lot and climate science can be very interesting. I am no expert though!
I have found a good correlation between CO2 rise and recent warming (http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/plot/esrl-co2/normalise/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:132/normalise), but I don’t stress this as evidence lol as such a simple correlation could easily be due to chance – there’s a well known saying that “correlation does not equal causation”!
“there really must be proof so solid that nobody prepared to recommend incredibly costly violently aggressive government action to punish private citizens for the crime of releasing CO2 into the atmosphere could possibly hold that “the issue is one of risk not certainty,” right?”
Hmm good point! I would say though that people don’t often have the luxury of knowing for sure what is going to happen in the real world, but we have to make a decision anyway. Life is tough but that’s just the way the cookie crumbles! (lol). You might have heard of a thing called Risk Assessment (?). What Risk Assessment involves is weighing up the risks of different actions, even though there is no proof available. I know that sounds weird but Risk Assessments are done a LOT in the real world.
“Jeez, I endorse the common sense of self-defense against government thuggery imposed by las warmistas without so much as the courtesy of honest public debate and these aggressors complain about my observation that it might well come down to the use of deadly force to oblige these ‘viro authoritarian fascisti to keep their megalomania under check.”
you really do enjoy “whipping” yourself into a frenzy don’t you? ;) lol
RE: Tucci78 ““Shove the idiots’ noses in their own crap to help them to an accurate appreciation of what they’ve been dumping on the living room rug.”
Comforting bedside manner as always Dr. Rich Bravo!
“If there is any integrity – of any kind – in “the lukewarmer constituency,” they must be appraised of the moral odiousness as well as the incontrovertible methodological rottenness of las warmistas. There is in fact nothing in “the lukewarmer constituency” to which honest human beings can appeal unless and until these willful ignoramuses get jerked into sharp confrontation with factual reality”
These sentences make no sense. Reduce the dosage.
Or increase it. Go ask House.
What Vermin Supreme needs is a good impersonator.
=================
“Greenpeace, which has a combined global budget of over $100 million a year.”
Gotta pay for those thousands of staff, expeditions and field projects all around the world, I guess. No tax deductions for their lobbying, either. How many staff at Heartland?
And then you have to consider how Heartland is a part of State Policy Network with stink tanks in every state. Huge. Betcha that combined budget puts Greenpeace’s to shame. All tax deductible, and no need to get on a boat, unless it’s to “rub shoulders” with legislators and big donors, of course.
“We took it down immediately and admitted that it was in poor taste and a mistake, but they continue to promote madmen on the other side of the issue including Michael Mann and Bill McKibben, and hypocritically pound on us for our “ethical lapse.” ”
To equate either Michael Mann or Bill McKibben with the Unabomber is just absurd. That type of rhetoric will not engage any one in meaningful debate
True enough. But what will?
Global warming alarmists equated the skepticism of William Gray to a Holocaust denier because he had the courage to stand up and be counted. Look at what the Left did to George Bush because he had the courage to stand up for America against Prince Albert who was in the can for Kyoto.
Meh on George Bush, but I take your main point. It would take a lot of Unabomber billboards to come close to making up for al this vicious and potentially dangerous “climate denier stuff. I continue to think it’s almost inevitable that some off his bean greenie’s gonna take a potshot at some prominent “denier.”
It is business is in the crosshairs.
The analogy may have been more that Mann and McKibben can engage in similar behavior as Heartland’s billboard and not get called on it.
as absurd (and factual) as this, Jay Tee?
I can’t give Heartland marching orders. But it should be really obvious by now what they should stand up for and vigorously promote for the good of all humanity.
When the Industrial Military Complex was rolled back years ago and none of the Leftist-libs cared one wit the thousands of careers that were cut short as employees in their 50s got their pink slips and the boot. Now we’ve got a Government Education Complex that is in serious need of a haircut. If it is not rolled back improvement in the quality of all human life will cease and millions around the globe face serious peril and nothing but misery, poverty and death if the Sun winks and hell freezes over in 50 years.
I found Goldberg’s “hub of the climate contrarian network” repugnant. The Guardian would very much like its readers to perceive Heartland as the “vox pop” of climate scepticism, but it is not, never was, nor ever will be. It is as much the hub of scepticism as Big Oil is its secret funder.
Heartland speaks for the sceptic movement precisely as much as the Unabomber speaks for believers in Global Warming – not one iota. I am disgusted by these guilt-by-association tactics from both Heartland’s Bast and the Guardian’s Goldberg.
Global Warming Hype a Toga Worn by Leftists and Crooks http://wp.me/p27eOk-7G
Simon,
But Heartland holds an annual conference which is attended by many prominent skeptics and publishes the NIPCC report. Therefore although it can’t be said to represent all skeptics (any more than the IPCC represents us “warminsts”) it is surely fair to say it represents a certain body of skeptic opinion. At the very least it is certainly attempting to be a significant “player” in the “debate”.
Andrew, you say it yourself. Heartland no more represents “all skeptics” than the IPCC represents all warmists. It may hold views which are common to many sceptics, but – as was the point of my first post – Heartland is not the hub of a climate contrarian network; there is no network; climate sceptics are not an organised group funded by big oil, the tobacco industry or any other similar fictitious rendition of the “evil denier machine”. These oft-repeated nonsenses are deliberate lies touted specifically for the purpose of demonising climate sceptics and the very act of holding climate sceptical views through guilt-by-association.
As TonyB and Simon say, Heartland is irrelevant, certainly in the UK.
If anyone doubts this, take a look at the Denizens thread. Of the hundreds of comments there, only two mention Heartland as an influence.
It is bizarre that the left-wing UK Guardian has such an obsession with them, publishing four articles about them in the last 5 days.
Heartland is not active in the UK, not yet anyway. They are leaders in the US. Have you seen their NIPCC reports? http://nipccreport.org/
The Green Guardian recognizes an emerging force.
It’s hard to take seriously the claims of bias and omission skeptics level at the IPCC reports when the NIPCC reports turn bias and omission up to 11 with nary a hint of complaint from skeptics.
lolwot –
Your comment drove me to the NIPCC site. My first visit! Thank you and David Wojick.
ye olde reverse psychologe
Ha! I had almost asked if you were a false flag troll. Regardless, I can at least appreciate your sense of humor while otherwise being unable to understand your intent. My compliments.+
I only ever looked at Heartland website, because of Peter Gleick actions….
and my little encounter with him..
http://www.realclimategate.org/2012/02/clarifications-and-how-better-to-communicate-science/
last email <24 hours before he phished Heartland, for a moment I think Tamsin thought she might have helped tipped him over the edge.
In the world of liberal Utopianism there is an activist EPA and the sacrifice of truth and honesty is not alarming to science. It’s CO2 that is alarming and should be thought of as evil like incandescent light bulbs, plastic bags and cigarettes.
CO2 is a trace gas and I do have a trace of alarm. It is really a realist really small trace of alarm.
Sort of like… walking under a ladder?
It is like walking under where a ladder may have been years ago, maybe.
… to avoid a black cat.
Not a trace gas.
It would have to be less than 100 ppm for that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trace_element
If the atmosphere was a 100-story building, our anthropogenic CO2 contribution today would be equivalent to the linoleum on the first floor,
But my team of linoleum layers will eventually make that building uninhabitable just by laying linoleum, layer by layer.
…keep in mind that everyone knows global warming has been much better for humanity than global cooling. “The net result of a projected doubling of atmospheric CO2 is most likely to be positive.” (Walter Starck)
“everyone knows” – that wondeful phrase always followed by a statement of pure opinion……
Afraid of warming to death?
Keep in mind that humans evolved during a glaciation, and the discovery of human artifacts under the north sea (doggerland), and the wet bulb temperature limit for mammals, leads me to believe that the earth can feed more humans during a glaciation than during hot house conditions caused by a CO2 excursion.
Really?
And what would these hordes of mammals feed on, pray tell?
….evolved during a glaciation? More like barely survived?
“If man made global warming is indeed real, and it helps to prevent another ice age, this would be the most fortunate thing that has happened to our species since we barely escaped extinction from an especially cold period during the last ice age some 75,000 years ago.” ~Walter Starck
The Catastrophists Quiz: http://wp.me/p27eOk-3T
That barely survived was likely due to Toba, a volcanic eruption, not due to the ice age glaciation.
Heartland announced that presentations would be available on the website early next week.
I watched most of it online. The Presenters were excellent. You can still go to the website and see the presentations and base your criticisms on what they presented, instead of what you think they likely presented. Climate Etc has had threads on how you never change a preconceived opinion based on any evidence that does show different. There are a lot of us who don’t easily change our minds. Look at what the presenters said. Think about it and then offer you opinion.
Climate Etc is supposed to be about debate and discussion.
The Heartland Presenters do not have a consensus. That is real science.
You pretend to be debating, but there is not an open mind out there that shows up. You all say the same thing you said several years ago.
I am guilty also, you have not convinced me.
Who among you has changed your opinion on anything because of Climate Etc?
I find a lot of interesting and educational threads and links, but no evidence that anyone is considering the possibility that they could be wrong about anything.
We must get to the point of knowing that we don’t yet know everything or we will not advance real knowledge.
I for one made a major change due to my Climate Etc. reading. After watching the confusion in the discussion of zero feedback sensitivity I realized that it is an incoherent concept, yet it is central to AGW and CAGW. This was quite new for me. I also now understand many of the more detailed debates much better. This is about learning, and sharing ideas, not about changing minds. The debate does not sleep.
YES!
You found another incoherent concept at the root of climate science on blog! That’s number 507. A billion “skeptic” points for you!
Just imagine what you might accomplish with this!…
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/PrinciplesPlanetaryClimate/index.html
Will you be telling the children all about how you used a blog to figure out that an entire scientific discipline was incoherent?
“Who among you has changed your opinion on anything because of Climate Etc?”
I have. This site opened up a portal for me to many many new sources of information related to climate. It was like a domino effect, one new source led to another. The pursuit of information here related to climate opened up the entire spectrum for me. I started on the skeptical side. I read a lot, learned, absorbed, put things into context and as a result, my position shifted toward the warm side. I was wrong about a lot of perceptions I had. For me there is no doubt about AGW. The argument for me now is about sensitivity.
I said this to you before. You either never saw my reply to you in the past or you chose to ignore it. If it was the latter, then you have an issue with learning.
“I find a lot of interesting and educational threads and links, but no evidence that anyone is considering the possibility that they could be wrong about anything.”
Here is your first piece of evidence…. I admit I was wrong… when will you?
“We must get to the point of knowing that we don’t yet know everything or we will not advance real knowledge.”
Of course we don’t know everything, that is not the argument. It’s not about whether we will know everything, it’s about do we know enough? Do you make decisions based entirely on knowing all the relevant information? You won’t advance your own knowledge until you admit to yourself that it’s not about knowing everything, it’s about knowing enough to make a decision. Are you ready to say you are wrong?
“For me there is no doubt about AGW”
Anything specific convince you?
Andrew
No, there is no specific piece I can point to that changed my mind. The change happened as a metamorphisis and accumulation of information. It is seeing the ‘big’ picture for me and not a few of the sideshows. I still feel very strongly there are big issues with the way the science is reported for policymaking and the degree of confidence the science is reported in support of AGW, but I have to accept that there is AGW, and CO2 does have a warming effect.
I have a background in quantum chemistry, so I do not question the basic physics of radiative heat transfer, it is congruent with what I learned as a graduate student and my understanding of thermodynamics. But I have not lost my skepticism either. I am plenty skeptical about how sensitivity is determined whether through proxy data or through modeling. Both have flaws, but both are useful to our overall learning.
I see a lot of AGW proponents accuse skeptics of being in denial and stereotyping skeptics as being denialists. I have a big problem with the breadth of that argument because it is too simplistic about who skeptics are and what they believe. No doubt there are skeptics who deny AGW, but they are not the whole group, there is a range of skepticism. Any AGW proponent who reduces thier arguments to over simplified world views of skeptical people I tend to dismiss, such as comparing all skeptics to people who deny smoking causing cancer or to people who don’t believe in evolution. These types of comparisons are dumb and miss the point of understanding what make someone skeptical. It is a lazy, poorly thought out reaction, not an argument for AGW.
I equally have a hard time relating to skeptics who think AGW is nothing but a hoax or nothing but lies. The overwhelming majority of scientific work being done on understanding the climate cannot be some large orchestrated effort to hoodwink the general populace. I think I understand the basis of where that thinking comes from… but it is not enough evidence to condemn the whole field. I equally dismiss skeptics who take this type of world view.
I am not an alarmist, I have a problem with AGW prognosticators who are sure we are headed toward thermogeddon. But I also don’t think we can stand still on our energy policy and methods of power generation. If we can create good, efficient methods of generating energy that reduce or don’t emit CO2, that would be good.
I am a pragmatist, I don’t realistically think there can be a wholsale change in the way our economies work and the energy necessary for them to thrive without major repercussions. I am wary of those using AGW as a means to obtain power. This problem (to the degree of a problem it is) has to be solved within the democratic framework of our western cultures.
I like to think I am treading the middle ground and am open to investigating new information as it comes up.
I think you hit the nail on the head. It makes sense that CO2 will tend to warm. But what are the feedbacks? Will the feedbacks mitigate the tendency of CO2 to warm the atmosphere? That’s the question.
I saw the bill board. It did not “equate” anyone with Ted Kaczynski. It parodied those who claim that believing in CAGW makes one intellectually and morally superior. It was a direct assault, not on individual CAGW activists, but on the manufactured cache’ of being a thermageddon advocate.
As to Heartland “losing the war,” the war is not about Heartland. If you want to use military analogies, Heartland is a major in the skeptical army (at most maybe a lieutenant colonel). Heartland could disappear tomorrow and the war would not be lost.
The next real, major battle in the climate war will take place in the US on November 6, 2012. And so far, it looks like the CAGW forces are going know what Lee after Gettysburg (if not Custer at Little Big Horn).
All of you who get virtually all of your news from places like the Guardian, the New York Times, Huffington Post, the TV networks (and you progressives, moderates and independents know who you are), may be in for a very big surprise . The filtered news you get may lead you to believe the tides are shifting in favor of the “consensus,” but there is a whole world out there that your favorite “news” organs ignore.
Let’s talk on November 7 about how the war is going.
Well said Gary. Except Lee did not lose at Gettysburg. It was a draw. Custer on the other hand, did lose, to say the least. But in politics a draw is a loss for those advocating radical action, so Lee too lost, politically. November should be fun, with skeptics likely to win the Presidency, not to mention the House and Senate. But stopping EPA is another issue, not so easy.
However, Heartland is at least a Brigadier General. The lowest rank of general for those of you who do not follow warfare.
David,
Lee didn’t lose the war at Gettysburg, but he certainly lost the battle. Strategically, politically, every way imaginable. From being on the verge of victory and marching through the center Washington D.C., to barely escaping with his troops only through the fecklessness of some of the Norther commanders, is not a draw.
You aren’t a Southerner by any chance, are you, considering it the War of Northern Aggression?
And I disagree about Heartland being a general. A general would have real power. Heartland is involved in PR (important PR, but still PR), just like Greenpeace. If you want to talk about generals in the climate “war,” you have to look to policy makers. Politicians and those who can sway them, or can move large numbers of voters.
As a lifelong Dem with an occasional flirtation with libertarianism, I find myself deeply conflicted re this upcoming election. Agreed, Obama’s green objectives are pathetic at best, and profoundly dangerous at worst. But so too do I find much of what passes for conservatism these days. Romney’s an empty suit, though the best of an almost unbelievably weak field of repub. presidential contenders.
I
good, so far.
you know the roulette wheel is rigged and you know that the casino across the street is the same.
does this suggest that you can only lose by playing?
My “New American Desk Encyclopedia, Third Edition” (19913) says of Gettysburg, in part:
“The major conflict of the US Civil War, fought July 1-3, 1863…. Lee struck deep into Union territory, reaching PA in June, 1863. He and the Union Army…converged on Gettysburg PA. On July 1 and 2 there were many inconclusive attacks and counterattacks. Union reinforcements arrrived on July 2. On July 3, suicidal confederate attacks broke the Union line on Cemetary Ridge, but were driven back in disorder. On July 4, after a day of stalemate, Lee retreated under cover of night and rain…. The costly battle marked a reversal in the fortunes of the Confederacy which paved the way for the eventual Union victory.”
Lee initiated the battle. Lee retreated from it, under cover of night. So he was driven back. He lost. Everybody knew it, and it broke the spirit of the Confederacy (the South could not afford the 20,000 soldiers it lost at Gettysburg).
My definition of losing a battle is that your line is broken. Nobody picked this location The armies literally stumbled upon each other. The Union army wisely took up a defensive position. The Rebs attacked them without success, then withdrew unmolested. That is a textbook draw.
I am a student of this battle, among others. Lincoln was furious that Mead did not pursue Lee, but Mead was just happy not to have been destroyed, as others had been before him. Lee lost only in the important sense of not winning. It was a first.
I must mention Custer, since he was mentioned. He led the burning of the Shenandoah Valley (where I live), to starve out the Reb army, along with the civilians. Many consider this the start of total war. We think rather fondly on Little Big Horn.
As we rednecks like to put it, what goes around, comes around. So be it with CAGW.
Lee wanted to destroy the union army and invade the North for a second time. The Union wanted to stop him. Lee was unable to do what he wanted, the Union army survived intact, and Mead obtained his objective. To this amateur historian, that’s a loss for the Grey and a win for the Blue.
The battle may have been a draw in the number of casualties, but that is no indicator of success.
The North Vietnamese Army was decimated by their Tet offensive. A massive tactical victory for the U.S. But the U.S. lost the battle in so far as it destroyed the will of the U.S. Congress to continue the war. Similarly, any hope the South had of European intervention in the Civil War died at Gettysburg.
And was right about you being a Southerner I see, which explains your
perspective.
Lee lost over 1/3 of his army at Gettysburg. Hardly ” unmolested”.
Lee’s battle was a draw; his campaign was a defeat. A draw in a ‘must-win’ situation counts as a defeat.
I sympathize with what Heartland says they were trying to do with the controversial ads, but they messed up the execution. An ad campaign that needs to be explained (or worse, explained away) is a PR blunder. Some people who might have been reached by the recent conference won’t be reached, simply because of the ads. Speakers were lost. Allies were offended. Audience was squandered. Credibility was sacrificed. A defeat, not a draw. The moral high-ground from Fakegate was abandoned in an afternoon, and the enemy didn’t need to fire a shot. Someone should have resigned.
Gary at 10.52 Re Tet, my recollection as a non-expert was that it was the Viet Cong irregulars who were destroyed at Tet, leaving the field to the NVA – possible one of the North’s objectives in that offensive.
Fausdtino,
The Tet offensive involved both Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army combatants. I’ve never seen a breakdown of the figures between the VXC and NVA, but both forces were severely reduced. The losses were a major factor, together with mining and bombing the North, in forcing the North to the peace conference.
Agree. Lee’s army was shattered at Gettysburg, and had to retreat back to Virginia. The Union army also of course received a severe loss, but Gettysburg was held and the eventual defeat of the Confederate cause assured.
Interesting, the Australian media gives the impression that Obama is almost a shoo-in.
That is amazing, as his winning is relatively unlikely at this point, I would say, based on polls.
No wonder the blogosphere is flourishing. I am reminded of something that happened way back when I taught issue analysis at Carnegie Mellon, in the mid 70’s. We picked an environmental issue and divided the class in half, one for each side of the issue, greens versus industry (in this case farmers). The students were supposed to find newspaper info presenting or supporting their side. The industry side reported that they could find nothing. There must be some way to measure this lack of balance.
David
Your comment make it appear you do not study the polls. Right now, the state by state polls show Obama with a solid lead in the electoral college. It may change, but Obama would be the betting favoriate today
Most polls coming out lately are skewed in ways pollsters know will show a more favorable result for Obama.
Most are doing polls of “registered voters” who always skew more Democrat than ultimate election results. “Likely voter” surveys are always more accurate (and virtually always have more conservative favoring results).
More to the point, almost all pollsters right now are sampling based on somewhere around 40% De3mocrat to 35% Republican and the rest “independent.” That’s a wider disparity than Obama got in 2008, and a flip of the actual returns in 2012.
But don’t worry, in the two weeks before an election, the pollsters start doing more honest polls of likely voters with more realistic sampling so that their blatant fudging of results is not so obvious to the hoi polloi.
The polls right now show Obama leading by 1 to 3 points, which means he is really behind by about 5-7. For an incumbent 6 months before the general election, that is death.
Shoot, he only got about 55% of the vote in the last two Democrat primaries, faced by no name challengers.
Unless something really weird happens soon, he is toast.
But you will never read that where most of you get your news from. The “mainstream” American press has become basically the PR wing of the Democrat Party.
GaryM;
For at least one decade, probably quite a few.
Fiscal discipline (AKA bankruptcy) will continue to thin the herd, though.
GaryM
It beats me as to how such a large democratic country as the US can throw up two such poor candidates as Obama and Romney
tonyb
tonyb,
Too many progressives run both parties. That gives us people like Dole and Kerry, and McCain, and Obama, and Romney and Hillary Clinton.
True conservatives like Reagan are kept from office in all but the rarest of circumstances. And even moderately conservative Democrats like Bill Clinton (who for all his massive faults is a brilliant man and great politician) don’t have a chance any more.
Most genuine conservatives (and those few conservative Democrats who are left) are not willing to run the gauntlet of the elitist media and political apparatchiks of both parties. The real hope for this country lies in the Congress, where there might just be a conservative majority for the first time in my lifetime after the next election, in the House at least.
Progressives are drawn to power. That is why they people the party leadership of both parties, and the editorial positions of most media outlets. Even once conservative outlets like National Review, if they last long enough, tend to come under the control of those who want the positions that provide authority/power over others, ie. progressives.
Conservatives generally concern themselves with raising their families, running their businesses, working at their churches, etc. We tend not to gravitate towards positions where power is centralized. We are repelled by them.
I think eventually we will come to learn that no government of such size can remain free of the drift toward ever more centralized power that attracts progressives like moths to a flame. The largest states are, with the exception of Texas, the most progressive. The same holds true with countries. We will either have to shrink and decentralize government, or give in to the inevitable growth of leviathan.
I should have added both Bushes to the list of political mediocrities our system has put forth recently.
Gary,
Thanks for your explanation of the system. It is disappointing that the leader of the western world routinely throw up such poor candidates from both parties. Which is interesting in itself, how come you only have polar opposites but no party in the middle?
Tonyb
The US, unlike all other Western democracies, doesn’t have a parliamentary system. The mechanics are complicated, but the bottom line is that without the coalition system in parliamentary systems, a vote for a third party is a wasted spoiler.
You can study the way the system works if you want to, but it’s the mechanics of the system that makes it almost impossible for a third party to get any traction.
And I suspect that the entrenched parties like it that way.
And btw, a “middle” party would nominate somebody like Mitt Romney. There isn’t a “right wing” candidate in this coming election. Despite what you might read, he’s hardly a right-winger. He was the governor of Massi-frakking-cheusits, for gawd’s sake.
tonyb,
P.E. is correct, the fact we do not have a parliamentary system is the reason we usually only have two parties. But the natural tendency of parties is to be governed by those who seek power. Such people, progressives, generally share common views. That is why European political parties, except for the “radical parties” of the right and left, are virtually indistinguishable to us conservatives on the issue of public policy.
So it was that the Democrats and Whigs became increasingly similar on the major issues of the day in the U.S. in the 19th century. This lead directly to the creation of the Republican party, as a strictly conservative party under Abraham Lincoln. Which also lead to the end of slavery in the U.S. (Notice the similarity between feeling you are sufficiently superior to your fellow man to own him, and feeling you are sufficiently superior to your fellow man to control him through the government.)
In the years since its creation, the GOP has slowly, inexorably shifted left. The U.S. GOP has been becoming more like European “conservative” parties, ie. conservative in name only. We are fast approaching a point where, if the progressives in the Republican party maintain control much longer, conservatives will in fact leave the GOP and form a new party.
Personally, I think that would be a disaster. We have to fight and win control of the GOP. A third party would just ensure Democrat dominance for decades, and we are too close to the economic abyss to allow that to happen. Besides, if conservatives can’t gain control of the more conservative party, what right do we have to govern the country?
Oh, and by the way, your question assumes that a “middle party” would be a good thing. I think it decidedly would not.
You can have a free market economy, or a socialist economy. If you try to combine the two, the socialist bureaucracies will just inevitably accumulate more power until you end up with socialism anyway.
Similarly on social issues. Either you adhere to the Judeo-Christian ethic, which made the free market possible, or you surrender to progressive/libertarian/secularist hedonism. There too, there is no real middle ground. If the state seeks to govern without an objective moral base, the degradation of society leads inevitably to the breakdown of those elements of society which again make a free market possible.
Tony Blair was famous for claiming he had found a third way. But his concept of mixing government control and the profit motive was not new. It was all the rage in Europe in the 30s and 40s. Electrified trains often have a third rail, contact with which is generally fatal. I find the same to be true in politics.
Also, from a practical standpoint, in a parliamentary system, parties are elected, who then usually form coalitions. In the US system, the entrenched parties are the coalitions. And often there are internal conflicts in the parties because of this. A couple of examples are how the Democrats have a conflict between gays and racial minorities, who are often socially conservative. Or on the GOP side, the social conservatives and libertarians are frequently at each others’ throats. So if you think of the American political parties more as permanent coalitions, it all makes more sense, and you realize that it is actually more similar to the way parliamentary systems work that at first glance.
P.E.;
Your thinking needs to take into account that progressivism by its very nature requires the accumulation of centralized power, wielded by those determined to cull and shape the population. It regards individualism and individuation as dangerous wild cards which perpetually threaten to upset the plan and apple cart.
Politics, media, and education are their primary routes to attaining the necessary control . They will always gather in and around those fields, and never give up. “Forward” Progress depends on it/them!
$
Take note: they didn’t say “losing the war”, they said “losing the battle”. I think that’s accurate. It was a bonehead move. But the war goes on. And on, and on, and on.
P.E.,
You are of course correct. I was responding to Dr. Curry’s comments, but misread them.
I read ” In terms of fighting their little battles with individuals on the environmental fringe, they lost sight of the war” and somehow left out “sight of” in responding, as though she had written Heartland “lost the war.”
But otherwise, I stand by the substance of my comment.
Even if HI’s strategy was just to toss a stink bomb into the midst of the unaware and complacent, it was successful.
Go back to the Denizens thread here and on similar sites, and consider the paths take away from lazy orthodoxy. The start is usually some discrepancy, disruption, challenge (though occasionally simple investigative thinking and reading which exposed AGW/CAGW flaws and distortions).
Combining fakegate and the billboard, Heartland has received tremendous press coverage. As the saying goes, just spell my name right. My Curriculum project got called an “attack on science” by the NYT, but they spelled my name right. Woohoo. A full page ad would have got less attention. People are waiting to see what I produce, some angrily.
Heartland is now a standard term in the climate language, the tough guys from Chicago.
There is no such thing as bad publicity … well, if you aren’t Anthony
Weiner, anyway.
One positive thing, if the ‘climate concerned side of the debate, do anything as silly as the billboard.
Then unless they are roundly condemned by all those that condemned Heartland? we will all know where they are at.
If…
“If…”
Yeah, keep telling yourself that, Louise. It’s already happened and we already know the answer. Are you going to pretend you don’t remember this?
I certainly don’t remember a whole lot of round condemnation of it. There was scattered commentary but nothing near the wholelsale reaction warranted by the vile nature of what was presented. But I guess advocating and showing the explicit killing of school children based on a scientific (or even political) dispute is no big deal while a poster of a convicted murderer on the other hand, setting him up as a bad example not to be followed, is beyond the pale?
Do you see how silly you look, Louise? Here’s a question – did you publicly condemn this video when it came out? What did you think of the pride these people showed in producing it? How would you compare it to the Heartland billboard?
And if, on the infinitessimal chance that you’ve never seen or heard of it before, what do you have to say about it now?
The Consensus side engages the Skeptic side. Ops, they really try to not do that. The Consensus side has one consensus that clearly is not supported by data. The Skeptic side has many views. Some are likely wrong worse than the Consensus and some are likely more right than the Consensus side. Skeptics tolerate, debate, discuss with people who disagree. Consensus Science is not Science. Become Skeptic and bring what you do believe over into the discussion. Become scientists again.
Heartland is important to whom and why? If people think Heatland is important I suggest you are to close to the issue to evaluate it objectively.
Rob, in the US political arena, which is the only one that really counts at this point, HI is the leader on climate skepticism, now more than ever. Politics is a rough game. Do you even follow the US political game wrt climate change?
Clear is, HI mishandled the situation after Gleick….but
they will sort it out….
This has nothing to do with the Skeptics cause, which
will continue to progress……I foresee that the Skeptics
will get stronger and more effective ammunitions, and
be fit and ready for Armaggedon….
JS
Not clear. HI must be careful not to compromise official investigations. Don’t assume facts not in evidence.
The intellectual kinship between the Unabomber, Al Gore and the CAGW movement is far more than merely coincidental.
Alton Chase wrote an outstanding article for The Atlantic in 2000, “Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber” http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2000/06/chase.htm. It explores the intellectual origins of Kazynski’s world view in the undergraduate curriculum at Harvard, in particular, the malthusian teachings of the General Education curriculum.
From the article: “But readings can have profound effects on some students, especially the brightest, most conscientious, and least mature. Certainly the intellectual climate generated by Gen Ed informed Kaczynski’s developing views. The Unabomber philosophy bears a striking resemblance to many parts of Harvard’s Gen Ed syllabus. Its anti-technology message and its despairing depiction of the sinister forces that lie beneath the surface of civilization, its emphasis on the alienation of the individual and on the threat that science poses to human values — all these were in the readings. And these kinds of ideas did not affect Kaczynski alone — they reached an entire generation, and beyond.”
Among other personalities imbibing this curriculum was one Albert Gore, who enrolled in 1965, while Kazynski graduated in 1962.
Alton Chase turned his article into a book. http://www.amazon.com/Harvard-Unabomber-Education-American-Terrorist/dp/0393020029
It is accordingly not an accident that even knowledgeable readers cannot distinguish between passages from the Unabomber Manifesto and Earth in the Balance. Nor that the Manifesto was treated so seriously by so many environmentalists when it was published. Nor that the leadership of major environmental organization embrace similarly radical views on eliminating industrial society and reducing human population.
Thus, as a matter of intellectual history, there is a legitimate point to be made by noting the convergence of views between Kazynski and CAGW advocates. Nevertheless, a billboard was not the place to make that point, and that the blowback shows the decision was a PR mistake.
Regards,
Thanks for the links
Quinn the Eskimo:
The intellectual kinship between the Unabomber, Al Gore and the CAGW movement is far more than merely coincidental.
Wrong. Kaczynski is a violent, paranoid schizophrenic Luddite. Given the opportunity, he would murder Al Gore in a heartbeat. It is more accurate to say there is no intellectual kinship.
So you’re saying global warming alarmists are Kacynski without the violence? I guess you haven’t seen what is going on in Greece.
If there’s no intellectual kinship, why are passages from the Unabomber Manifesto indistinguishable from Earth in The Balance?
Take the test yourself. http://www.crm114.com/algore/quiz.html
Kaczynski had a heavily annotated, underlined, dog-eared copy of EITB in his little cabin in the woods. Certainly he felt the kinship rather strongly and he is not stupid.
But if he is insane, what does this say about Al Gore? At what point did Kaczynski’s views pass from their astonishing congruence with the lucubrations of a Nobel Prize winner to those of a delusional madman? Was it only at the boundary between exposition and violence, or was it someplace earlier in the chain of “reasoning”? Prince Phillip, former president of the WWF, said “If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.” Getting kind of crowded there in Kaczynski’s cabin.
The Alton Chase article I linked to contains an interesting and substantive discussion of whether Kaczynski was insane, and of the dilemma faced by deep-thinking environmentalists who agreed with his analysis but who were, unlike Prince Phillip, unwilling to embrace the slaughter of innocents. The article indicates they resolved the dilemma exactly like you did, by calling him a nut. Kaczynski vigorously resisted the claim that he was insane, feeling it patronized him on a matter of ultimate significance and made it too easy to disregard the substance of his views. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/longterm/aron/kaczynski122697.htm
Is this an appropriate time to remind Quinn the Eskimo that Anders Breivik stated that Monkton and others of similar views heavily influenced his thinking?
Both ‘sides’ have nutters. This does not mean that both (or either) ‘side’ is comprised soley of nutters.
Louise
I said that way upthread. Both sides have their share of nutters and its entirely irrelevant to the ongoing scietific debate.
Yes, both sides have their nutters. A notable distinction, however, is that a sizable number on the warmist side are tenured professors or leaders of environmental organizations or leaders of NASA institutes who openly call for the eradication of industrial civilization or openly fantasize about wiping out a significant human population.
”
…the eradication of industrial civilization or openly fantasize about wiping out a significant human population.
”
Fantasize? Pffft.
All the tenured professors and enviro-engineers I know have already destroyed their cars and computers, retreated to the mountains, and are fully behind the deployment of nuclear weapons as a form of population control. The more moderate ones have already sold off their children.
This doesn’t have to do with just the “greens”.
It really has to do with the delusional thinking of the neo-Dominionists that believe that they can steamroll anything that gets in their way, including the natural environment, and that they can produce a cornucopia of free energy and natural resources out of sheer willpower.
The war that most of the clueless Heartlanders are fighting now is against two fronts. They apparently believe that they are fighting the old war against the greens, but don’t realize that the new front is against those that are dedicated to basic sustainability. Sustainability has nothing to do with protecting nature per se, but on making sure mankind has enough resources to thrive. Unfortunately for the Heartlanders, the POV that Greens and Sustainers share is that they realize that everyone needs to work with the environment instead of considering it a foe that needs to be defeated. And sustainability is peripheral to climate change, which is obviously an important issue to consider and one that the Heartlanders would rather concentrate on because of its underlying uncertainty (i.e. an issue that feeds FUD).
Bottomline is that behind every Heartlander and climate skeptic I see on these skeptical commenting boards is someone that is knee-jerk opposed to making any progress in:
photovoltaic technology
geothermal technology
wind energy technology
hydropower technology
conservation ideas
recycling technology
solar thermal technology
wave energy technology
tidal energy technology
biomass energy technology
low-level human power
smart-grid technology
battery technology
fuel-cell technology
localized energy sources
gravitational storage technology
energy balancing technology
heat exchanger technology
Sure we can also look at nuclear and biotech and space-borne ideas but the thrust needs to be on all fronts.
It’s great that we can trade barbs over individual anectodes such as some loon’s manifesto. If you want a competing anecdote, let me link to a story in the latest issue of The Atlantic on the history of the beaver:
If you don’t believe in the writer’s historical perspective, I give you two substantiating references here and here.
The historical point is that corporations have no conscience and will work against the best interests of sustainability, not to mention essential green concerns over species extinction.
Bart R has got the best perspective on all this, in that we all have a stake in the outcome and do really own the earth’s resources both privately and collectively (gasp!) and so need to think in those terms.
WHT – The problem with the technologies you list is, to borrow a phrase, they are not sustainable. People and countries that use them in preference to cheaper alternatives go broke. Some folks are kind of persnickety about not throwing away money, and even more so about being ordered to do so.
Blue – not quite following your last comment there. Stalin did plenty w/ the technology of the day – 70 million dead by various reckonings. Mao did more with even less technology. Pol Pot was pretty anti-technology himself, with the Year Zero and all that, and they slaughtered 3 million or so with primitive technology and virulent ideology.
It’s the totalitarian impulse that is the problem, not the technology.
Regards,
Well, the mighty Quinn is a doomer, and a Luddite. Who’d a thunk it.
Quinn (tonyb?)
Kaczynski was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic by five doctors. Two prosecution doctors found him to be merely schizoid. But the fact of the plea deal implies that the prosecution was not convinced their doctors were going to be convincing at sentencing.
Politics and universities make for strange bedfellows. Similar sentiments (on say environmentalism) does not mean intellectual kinship, nor does it mean shared debilitating thought disorders.
Unsurprisingly, the test you linked to was difficult. However, half-way through I discovered a trick and scored 10/12.
Side note: I could have scored higher by correcting the two early mistakes. The trick was: Kaczynski’s IQ is 170, Gore’s 140. Kaczinski’s passages turned out to be those I had judged to be expressed with significantly more intelligence. OTOH my high score could mean I share a thought disorder with the Unabomber. There, I said it before lolwot.
blue
We agree that Kaczynski is a nut. Perhaps we differ on whether his fellow travelers of the Soylent Green variety are also nuts.
Nice job on the quiz.
Regards,
Quinn –
If you shudder at the thought of what Stalin might have accomplished with modern technology, then you ought to acknowledge intellectual kinship with the Unabomber. And accuse me too! Fear of a possibly inevitable future, technologically enabled tyranny is exactly the sort of motivation used by Kaczynski to justify his psychopathic actions. See? Not so good to point a finger here.
As a former Greenie, I can’t and won’t say they’re nuts. How about potentially dangerous cultists and some of the nicest people I have ever met?
Blue
violent, paranoid, schizophrenic luddite?
you mean like this, blueice2hotpants?
ignoramish (tonyb?)
The producers of the 10:10 video could be better described as ‘Malignant Narcissists’, ‘Sadistic Sociopaths’ or just plain Evil. Unfortunately, those are experimental, deprecated, and descriptive categories not recognized as actual mental illnesses. 10:10er disease does not disable the afflicted, it disables humanity. Ultimately, I see a pack of wolves attempting to incite violence in a flock of sheep.
Finally, the Unabomber’s victims were university liberals and technologists. AFAIK, Al Gore does not loathe these groups. Therefore, no shared worldview.
blueice2hotpants
The billboard was, as I suggest elsewhere/above, a stink bomb into the midst of the inattentive and comfortable. It worked fine! After all, how many drivers would have seen it? How many have now heard and read about it?
Quoting The Grauniad in a cAGW (whatever you want to call it) debate (whatever you want to call it)?
Quoting The Grauniad for anything that has a ‘lefty point of view’?
Quoting The Grauniad? Period. The paper with the smallest (bar the Independent – also lefty) (and declining) readership among broadsheet English newspapers?
Judith, are you not ashamed?
For the information of the uninitiated, the Guardian was for many years (and may still be) renowned for its masses of typos, hence it being widely referred to as the Grauniad, Graundian, etc. I found some merit in it back in the ’60s, but it has long since gone downhill.
> An indirect consequence of Gleick’s actions seems to have been to motivate some individual environmentalists to harass Heartland, which triggered a response that included the billboard.
I like the concept of an indirect consequence that triggers.
Must be battle fatigue.
watch the videos and see if you can pick up the heartlander who has the requisite sensibility to actually believe that the billboards would be effective.
It wasnt battle fatigue. It was a combination of arrogance and a particular style.
The fatigue referred to my liking.
The Guardian is extreme left wing paper supported by a large corporation that makes it money elsewhere.
Circulation has declined about 200,000 down to 215,000 in the last 10 years …
And Judith, using them as source damages you much, much more than anything Heartland has ever done.
We know that all global warming alarmists are Western Leftists. We also know, for example, that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than to expect that the typical AGW True Believer will admit any fact that contradicts their ideologically motivated preconceptions.
Don’t think it damages Dr. C, , but I do agree they’re not a reliable source of anything close to objective reporting. I’d love to hear your rationale Judith. In my opinion they represent an extreme position that’s deeply antithetical to your commitment to objectivity and fair play.
Well said!
“your commitment to objectivity and fair play” …is entirely imaginary.
Andrew
when i did the google search, the Guardian was the only MSM outlet writing about Heartland
Because Heartland is the bogeyman to moron left. They left can’t wait to stamp out any organization that would dare to challenge the AGW gravy train. The moron left project every evil trait they have onto the opposition.
And you are an accomplice.
““I’m willing to risk my arrest, because if Heartland Institute gets its way, it could be the end of civilization as we know it,” stated Alice Coffey an activist who risked arrest at today’s event.
http://www.risingtidenorthamerica.org/2012/05/rising-tide-chicago-disrupts-heartland-institutes-climate-denial-conference/
via
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/05/24/heartland-protester-lacking-historical-perspective/
Remember, the only difference between Alice and the Guardian is that more idiots read the Guardian.
I guess I’ll have to give some of my Big Oil and Big Tobacco money to Heartland.
Sunshine is overstating the case. The Gaurdian is certainly left of centre but in no way represents an extreme.
I disagree.
“Well, I’m certain you’ll agree that detonating school kids, footballers and movie stars into gory pulp for ignoring their carbon footprints is attention-grabbing. It’s also got a decent sprinkling of stardust – Peter Crouch, Gillian Anderson, Radiohead and others.
But it’s pretty edgy, given 10:10’s aim of asking people, businesses and organisations to take positive action against global warming by cutting their greenhouse gas emissions by 10% in a year, and thereby pressuring governments to act.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/sep/30/10-10-no-pressure-film
“pretty edgy” is not what I saw.
Judith
The Guardian may be influential with the tiny bumber of left leaning movers and skakers in Britain (such as the BBC) but I’m not sure their very small readership qualifies them as MSM.
tonyb
“when i did the google search, the Guardian was the only MSM outlet writing about Heartland.”
================================================
And you interpreted that to mean the Guardian’s reporter was correct?
“they’re not a reliable source of anything close to objective reporting”
Exactly. Go to Climate Depot or any of the other blogs if you want objective reporting.
Let’s be clear. The fear of global warming and fear that global cooling is caused by global warming and fear of calamitous and catastrophic climate change–all caused by America and industrialization–that fear is a mass mania of the West. We do not find these fears anywhere else.
The rest of humanity which of course is most of humanity–i.e., those who live in Brazil, Russia, India, China and in the developing and Third world countries–they do not share these fears and delusions. And all who do in the West are Western Leftists.
Scientists outside Western academia liken modern climatology to the study of ancient astrology. So, even though all global warming alarmists are Leftists, I believe there is keyword missing here. The dynamic of the impending Apocalypse that is the most ‘telling’ characteristic of the purveyors of global warming alarmism–and the self-defeating, the nihilisism and the righteous vengefulness we see coming from the True Believers–is a symptom of serious psychological dysfunction. There were Leftits before global warming alarmism so the missing word is ‘sick.’ Now we’ve got sick Leftits.
I didn’t really catch the connection to southpaw amazon warriors.
… all global warming are Lefties instead of Leftits? What would Marx say?
Marx would say that (C)AGW is the opium of the people.
“So, even though all global warming alarmists are Leftists”
well, except me
and possibly others….(they can chime in)
Of course. That’s why it is a political issue. Capiche? It’s a part of the Democrat party platform from hte Alarmist-in-Chief on down.
Hmm…. if you believe in CAGW but are not to be classified as a Leftist, then…. 1) are you against cap and trade? 2) against the UN Climate Fund?
3) Believe traditional nuclear power generation should be fast-tracked into production so as to allow for inexpensive, reliable energy.
If you can answer yes to those 3 questions, then I might believe you aren’t a leftist, just misguided. Otherwise, if you walk and talk like a leftist, you are one even if you don’t admit to it. Just like Obama claims to be a centrist…. he is NOT.
Heartland was a wannabe (and is now a hasbeen). It wanted to be the leader in climate change, but it lacked leaders and leadership qualities, and as it turns out was inept. It never was a hub. It’s greatest claim to fame is to be one in the eyes of the Guardian et al. If only it had stuck to providing a conference where the real leaders could meet.
Heartland is clearly the leader at this point. Who else is even close among skeptical US think tanks? They have the conferences, the newsletter, theNIPCC reports, the Forbes articles, plus a bunch more. This is why they are under attack, but attack measures success.
> a bunch more […]
Like a K-12 program, right?
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings and commented:
Judith Curry Quotes…..wait for it…Suzanne Goldenberg | The Guardian????????????
Well analyzed Dr. Curry. I might add to your comment:
“..the organization [got] caught up in petty warfare with individual environmentalists”
The quote from Sun Tsu:
‘No nation has ever benefited from a protracted war.’
It is concerning that more-and-more mathematicians, scientists, and engineers are receiving hate-mail and/or experiencing disturbing personal encounters with persons of unbalanced mind.
It takes only one such experience, to forever alter the risk level that a person perceives in this regard, to him/her self, and to family.
A visit to ‘http://ip-check.info’ will provide (free) an instant report regarding how much personal information your web browser(s) are leaking, to forums that (in some cases) have not demonstrated commitment and/or technical competence with regard to scrupulous protection of person privacy.
And needless to say, once a webblog or institute loses their reputation for integrity in this regard, that reputation is lost forever.
If desired, the above web site shows how to reduce these risks.
Recommended: because informed decisions are better decisions.
———————-
The above reflections were censored at Anthony Watts’ WUWT … and yet (IMHO) violence-tinged posts like Tucci78’s (above) constitute legitimate grounds for concern.
JC,
Heartland represents a fairly well integrated philosophy. They do not hide it; it is their fundamental purpose to present it far and wide. This has been common knowledge for a long time.
It does not surprise me, after seeing for 2 years what you present here at your excellent e-salon, that you appear have a fundamentally different philosophy and it would not surprise me if your philosophy is not very integrated in that you often take a rather philosophically pragmatic position on broad issues.
From my discussions at ICCC-7 I think the HI has recognized for some time that although the climate science discourse is necessary to counter CAGW from burning fossil fuels as promoted by the IPCC, they also know that the science itself is insufficient for the task of countering the ideology that is represented by the very chartering of the IPCC. Their integrated philosophy must also engage the fragments of multiple ideologies that inform the IPCC. It isn’t just scientific research that is necessary in the CAGW discourse.
I cannot believe you earnestly quoted the Guardian. Wow . . . . maybe you really do need to take a vacation to regain that old JC e-salon savoir faire.
Heartburn? I spent all three days at the ICCC-7 (my first ICCC) and only saw frequent outbursts of good humor and a sense of shared resolve.
John
> frequent outbursts of good humor […]
Any memorable Monkton mot juste?
Global warming is not a problem but fear of it is. Climate change can be a problem but that’s what climate does–it changes and that is natural–all we can do is prepare for it. The fear about climate change, however, is a symptom of a big problem.
I Am Afraid We Fear Too Much http://wp.me/p27eOk-o4
An international climate change conference which permits non-consensus views ought to be sponsored by an apolitical or U.S. based libertarian organization. (The exception is ok because the basic creed is “Thou shalt not promote thine theories by way of deception or force.”)
So after seven years, it’s best to part ways with Heartland. It would be ideal if a libertarian think tank stepped to sponsor ICCC #8. If not, I am willing to make a donation.
I ought to have said If so, am willing to make a contribution.
Dr. Curry,
There is a desperate need for a large scale organized/institutional counterforce to the massive financial resources of organizations such as Greenpeace, NRDC, etc. that are, in effect, advocating economic seppuku.
You— far better than most— are well aware of the substantial career risk to individuals within large organizations who don’t toe the “politically correct” party line— regardless of the existence of legitimate scientific “doubt” and “uncertainty.”
There is nothing scarier than institutional groupthink and “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness Of Crowds.”
Who is there to marshall the resources to do the necessary job ?
Notice that using the scheme below global warming alarmists are on the level of ‘meta-ignorance–i.e., unconscious incompetents refusing to ‘even consider the possibility of error–that makes reasoning impossible. The only thing you can do is tear up the charge cards.:
“Walker et al. (2003) categorize the following different levels of ignorance. Total ignorance implies a deep level of uncertainty, to the extent that we do not even know that we do not know. Recognized ignorance refers to fundamental uncertainty in the mechanisms being studied and a weak scientific basis for developing scenarios. Reducible ignorance may be resolved by conducting further research, whereas irreducible ignorance implies that research cannot improve knowledge (e.g. what happened prior to the big bang). Bammer and Smithson (2008) further distinguish between conscious ignorance, where we know we don’t know what we don’t know, versus unacknowledged or meta-ignorance where we don’t even consider the possibility of error.” ~J. Curry
The above is how we know AGW True Believers are not really scientists at all. By any definition we know what we’re dealing with because for the global warming alarmists even the easily accessible knowledge that the null hypothesis of AGW has never been rejected will forever be an unappreciated and unacknowledged fact.
Diogenes said:
Yes.
I’d add, we need proper due diligence. It needs to be well funded, competent and impartial.
I found this amusing.
“The Seventh International Conference on Creationism (ICC) is scheduled to be held August 4-7, 2013
72 summaries have been received from 59 primary authors. The theme breakdown is as follows:
23 – Earth Science
8 – Engineering
9 – Foundations of Science
19 – Life Science
4 – Social Science
8 – Stellar and Planetary Science
1 – Astro Science”
http://www.creationicc.org/
Ooh they play science too.
“In 2008 the Sixth ICC was co-sponsored by the Institute for Creation Research”
What is it with people setting up “institutes” to sponsor “international conferences” on particular scientific fields when actual science dares clash with their ideologies (libertarianism or religion depending on the topic)?
Perception, politics, rhetoric: This is what climate science has come to. Gone are facts, emperical evidence, objective views. We must win the hearts and minds by any means, or all is lost! B.S. The inability of climate science to simply state their proof to the the layman, is their greatest weakness. Don’t play on emotion, show me the proof (I=E/R, p=F/A, etc). These vague future death spiral scenarios generated from imaginative programmer-politicians have lost their impact (boy that cried wolf?). Global warming scare is definately on the decline, not because of Heartland institute but, because the science just isn’t there.
It isn’t about proof. It’s about a substantial danger. Science can’t prove that a particular smoker will die of cancer.
“These vague future death spiral scenarios” as you put them are the friendly wake up call given by the doctor telling you what might happen if you keep smoking 2 packs a day. But then he’s just an alarmist without proof isn’t he? Possibly a communist. Lets just stay in denial.
“It’s about a substantial danger.”
A persuasive case has not been made. It’s just not convincing.
Tge plant has a temperature range it operates in. It is currently near the lower end of the range. Its normal temperature is near the upper end. At its normal temperature life thrives. At its lower temperature, life struggles. Warmer is better.
Furthermore, we are in a long term cooling trend (for past 50 million years, and we have just passed the interglacial peak in the 100,000 year glacial-integlacial cycle, so the trend is cooling for the next 80,000 years or so – with some sudden, large, rapid temperature drops!)
If you want to get people to believe warming is scary, you need to explain why, convincingly and simply. That has not been done.
The danger is not about the planet itself in the longterm, but about the impact climate changes will have on species today and on our civilization. The time period of concern is the next few hundred years.
CO2 level is currently rising at a rate that is unknown in Earth’s long history. That’s the crux of the issue – it isn’t about absolute levels, that CO2 has been much higher in the past is irrelevant – it’s about how fast things change.
Living things including ourselves have to adapt to change. Change things too fast risks adaptation failing.
As far as glaciations go, on a global scale the cooling occurs over thousands of years. Species on Earth, including our own, have survived many such prior glaciations and they are frequent enough that I bet a fair amount of adaptation is built into the genetics of species alive today. After-all the types that couldn’t survive wouldn’t be around anymore.
But launching temperatures into a super-interglacial with temperatures breaching millions of years highs – this is unprecedented for many millions of years. And happening in mere centuries – this is a recipe for disaster. Especially when in parallel we have other significant changes taking place at a global scale to plant fertilization effect and ocean acidification. It would be far more sensible not to rock the boat so much.
Lolwot
You are confused. CO2 emissions and CO2 concentration are not a proxy for temperature.
The fear is about temperature. It’s not about CO2. It’s about rate of change of temperature and absolute temperature.
Absolute temperature: The geological record shows we are in a cool period – so there is no problem with being warmer. In fact warmer is better.
Rate of change of temperature: Greenland ice core data shows much faster rates of change of warming in the past 10,000 years (and even faster in the past 20,000 years) than we have experienced in the past 200 years. So rate of warming is not a problem. In fact, the fast warmings Greenland experienced where highly regarded by life :)
CO2 concentration Too low is a problem. High concentration is not a problem. Necessary for life. It’s a fertiliser Too low and life would die out. Planet’s CO2 concentration is near the lower limit.
This is what the geological record says.
If you want to get people to believe warming is scary, you need to explain why, convincingly and simply. That has not been done.
You have provided nothing except repetition of assertions to support your beliefs. Assertions are not persuasive.
lolwot said:
“As far as glaciations go, on a global scale the cooling occurs over thousands of years.”
————-
Not to be too critical, as I normally agree with at least the spirit of much of what you say, but if we’ve learned anything from the ice cores, it’s that cooling can happen rapidly…in less than a decade. The transition into the Younger Dryas period being a case in point.
Peter Lang: “CO2 emissions and CO2 concentration are not a proxy for temperature. The fear is about temperature. It’s not about CO2.””
The fear is about both and for good reason. The rate of recent CO2 rise compared the past shows that something unusual, perhaps unprecedented in earth’s history, is going on. That is an important part of the threat given CO2’s significant impact on a variety of systems on Earth (carbon cycle, greenhouse effect, ocean pH)
“Absolute temperature: The geological record shows we are in a cool period – so there is no problem with being warmer. In fact warmer is better.”
Just because it was warmer 50 million years ago it does not follow that changing to 4C warmer today will be OK. Life on Earth today is not necessarily adapted to conditions 50 million years ago. You have to take into account the time aspect, it’s not simply a matter of “was it warmer in the past?” but “how long ago?”
A disaster rising into a super-interglacial in just a few hundred years would not contradict the geological record. Such a shift is untested. Species today, ourselves included, may not be ready for it.
“Rate of change of temperature: Greenland ice core data shows much faster rates of change of warming in the past 10,000 years (and even faster in the past 20,000 years) than we have experienced in the past 200 years. So rate of warming is not a problem. In fact, the fast warmings Greenland experienced where highly regarded by life”
The recent rate and extent of warming in central greenland is more significant than skeptics often admit to:
http://hot-topic.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/GISP2rescaled480.png
Now add a further 5C or so warming for the next 200 years to that graph and you have something unprecedented in that entire record.
“CO2 concentration Too low is a problem. High concentration is not a problem. Necessary for life. It’s a fertiliser Too low and life would die out. Planet’s CO2 concentration is near the lower limit.”
Again the problem with it increasing today is to do with how fast it is increasing, not the absolute level. If CO2 increased at 2ppm per century instead of 2ppm a year there would be no danger in the next 300 years.
“If you want to get people to believe warming is scary, you need to explain why, convincingly and simply. That has not been done.”
I am not trying to get you to believe warming is scary. All I am doing is making it clear to other people that I can substantiate the threat.
I know your arguments already, I’ve seen them before from many other skeptics. They are unconvincing arguments. You are assigning false confidence to the conclusion that “there is no problem”. The geological record provides nothing to substantiate such a conclusion.
For there to be no problem the geological record would have to show many CO2 rises such as the current one happening in past interglacials within recent geological time such that it proves species today are likely able to adapt to it.
R Gates: I don’t mind criticism. As far as the Younger-Dryas I was under the impression that globally the cooling wasn’t as large as regionally. Eg like figure 2 here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/07/revisiting-the-younger-dryas/
Iolwot
R Gates is right, the planet cooled extremely rapidly. Similarly at the start of the Holocene it also warmed very rapidly despite an apparently constant co2 level, as I observed here in my article on sea levels;
“According to the BBC ‘Britain’s Drowned World’ TV programme carried out by ‘Time Team’, the inundation was caused by a prolonged sea level rise at 2cm per year (around 10 times the current rate) and exacerbated over a 15 year period by a 7 degree Fahrenheit temperature rise.
http://judithcurry.com/2011/07/12/historic-variations-in-sea-levels-part-1-from-the-holocene-to-romans/
We do not live in unprecedented climatic times, we live in very stable climatic times.
tonyb
lolwot
If my doctor told me to stop smoking 2 packs a day or I would have a high risk of getting a respiratory disease, possibly even cancer, I would possibly go for a second opinion and , if this was the same, stop smoking.
If a snake oil salesman told me I would have to purchase a very costly snake oil from him to be taken every day over the rest of my life in order to avoid a deadly disease (based on some model simulations he has made), I’d throw him out the door.
Don’t be fooled, lolwot.
It’s NOT your doctor.
Max
After reading all these comments, I am left with my fundamental belief that CAGW is going down the wrong path, led by the left and left leaning Western politicians. I am very naive to think that science can “win” in the end, mainly due to its adherance to the Scientific Method., but that is what I believe; If not that, then how does humanity right itself? Politicos and their herd of followers could very well keep this CAGW thing going for a l-o-n-g time, regardless of the type or amount of opposition.
Heartland has a winner with the NIPCC and in their forums/conferences. Just giving us a place to focus our attention is enough for Heartland to exist. But, “Win the War”? I think not. This is a war that we cannot “win” until the US Federal Government can be brought down in size. That is a lot of war to win and it will not be done by fighting CAGW and its’ offspring, alternative fuels.
Nope, that war can only be won on the political battlefield. All we can hope to do in the Environmental/Energy field is win this “battle”.
No one on the Left cared when the Industrial Military Complex was rolled back years ago and careers were cut short as 1,000s of employees in their 50s — wearing white shirts and pocket-protectors — got a pink slip and the boot. Now we’ve got a Government Education Complex that is in serious need of a haircut. If it is not rolled back improvement in the quality of all human life will cease and millions around the globe face serious peril and nothing but misery, poverty and death if we continue to waste billions of dollars chasing after the Left’s liberal Utopianism that is always over the next rainbow.
You are not naive.
You are correct: science will “win” in the end, mainly due to its adherance to the Scientific Method
The CAGW premise has not been validated by empirical scientific data, according to the Scientific Method, i.e. data that are based on actual physical observations or reproducible experimentation.
It has not withstood repeated falsification attempts following the Scientific Method. In fact, it is a non-falsifiable hypothesis.
It is solely based on theory plus some very dubious paleo-climate reconstructions and backed by model simulations, which in turn are supported by hypotheses rather than empirical data.
As a result, it remains an uncorroborated hypothesis.
But you are right IMO – science will “win” in the end by adhering to the Scientific Method and CAGW will fade into oblivion.
Max
Re: science can “win” over politics, mainly due to its adherance to the Scientific Method
But who says the Scientific Method will in fact be adhered to, especially when the science in question is run and paid for by political bodies ?
When a science-politics clash emerges, the political bodies in charge will oblige the science to fall into line. If advancing the cause of politics means hiding data, data will be be hidden. etc etc. And right from the start, scientists and projects will be selected considering their ideological stance and implications (it is no accident government scientists are largely leftwing – this is precisely what is needed to advance politics under cover of science).
Had the CAGwarmists gotten their way back in 1998 and mankind had stopped pumping CO2 in the atmosphere, science would NOT have won. The warmists/leftists would be taking the current cooling trend and slowing of sea level rise as proof that they had been right and that they had saved the world. It probably would have been a century or two at least (if ever) before science would have advanced enough to have proven them wrong. The next ten years is critical in this ideological battle. Nature is proving the sceptics right in that CO2 is not responsible for more than 1C temp increase for every doubling. The warmists have to scream loud and pull out every trick in the book now, because within a few years at most…. all hope of using CAGW to scare the population into socialist obedience and one world government will be forever lost.
If mankind had stopped pumping CO2 into the atmosphere in 1998, scientific disputes would be the least of your (our) worries. The Four Horsemen would be riding, and cutting huge swathes through the world’s populations. Advanced technical economies would be devastated. Non-advanced ones would have almost vanished.
Any surviving warmists would be ruing their recklessness. And hiding from lynch mobs.
I am surprised that anyone considers Heartland Institute to be a ‘central hub’ (implies a level of organisation that does not exist) or in any other way a heavy hitter in the big picture. It is a minnow, which we only know about because it gives The Grauniad the heebee-jeebees and because it hosts an annual conference which few people outside the cognoscenti have even heard of. And, of course, because of Gleick’s obsession, which led to a spectacular own goal – followed by HI’s own goal with the billboard.
AFAIK is is just one of many free-market think tanks in the US and worldwide, and by no means the best of breed. Cato, for example, is much better in terms of scholarship and depth. And, I agree with Judith that the fight for sponsorship among private sector thinktanks goes with the territory. It is not pretty, but as long as no-one breaks the law, it is just politics in another form. If someone (eg Gleick) appears to have broken the law, they should be prosecuted. That’s all.
Frothing at the mouth on either side of the debate is unattractive to the general public and unproductive internally.
+1 Johanna! Although I think its worth noting the following for additional context …
The Guardian’s Suzanne Goldenberg was among those who rushed to publish the Gleick-o-matic package in February – without checking its provenance and authenticity. And on the eve of the HI conference she launched her little “now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t, now-you-do” unsubstantiated “Gleick cleared” vehicle for “rehabilitation” of Gleick – and recycling of the fake memo’s myths and memes. Who knows, perhaps this wasn’t even written by her, but simply churned from what she was provided by Gleick’s high-priced damage-control PR hack.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not defending HI’s billboard débacle – and particularly not their appalling “defense” thereof! As I had noted on my own blog, they seem to have a rather unfortunate history of using – or attempting to use – inappropriate and thoughtless PR tactics in promoting their conferences, with no consideration whatsoever of how this might reflect on their speakers.
Conferences of mature organizations are planned well in advance. This one definitely wasn’t! The first anyone ever heard of it was an announcement on April 6. Even the “poster” in their April issue of Environment & Climate News gives no indication that they had any confirmed speakers.
April 6 was around the time that we began to see mention in the MSM of the NATO conference dates; my guess is this is what precipitated their decision to begin planning. Vaclav Klaus was going to be in town, and if he would agree to speak, then this was one airfare they wouldn’t have to pay!
So in early May when they saw that registrations were not exactly rolling in as they might have over-optimistically anticipated, they decided that they needed to do something to draw in the locals – and unwisely opted for the billboard series.
As you noted, there is no “central hub” – although perhaps HI and the Guardian share the mistaken view that they are! However, if HI aspires to be such a hub, then, IMHO, they need to adopt a far broader perspective than they have demonstrated to date.
In his closing remarks, Joe Bast correctly observed that “conferences are expensive”. Very true! But he also urged participants to “create buzz about the conference”. If he doesn’t understand that the way to recoup an organization’s conference expenses is to “create buzz” before the event – not after – then HI’s leadership is in bigger trouble than I thought!
Prince Albert’s message to America was that if you live like him you will destroy the country. I think we should all be more than fed-up with all of the hypocrisy coming out of government on our dime.
Judith Curry,
What is “the battle”? Is it the battle about belief in catastrophe caused by man’s CO2 emissions? Is the battle about ideological beliefs and agendas such as for world government, UN taxation, etc.?
If it is these then I believe the so called “Deniers of CAGW” are winning “The Battle”. For example:
1. The UN has given up on pushing Catastrophic Climate Change. The 2012 Rio Conference is about “Sustainable Development (back to the 1990s).
2. A recent Galaxy poll of the Australians shows Australian’s are not prepared to pay much to cut CO2 emissions. http://ipa.org.au/news/2668/voters-strain-at-paying-for-even-small-carbon-cuts-
3. Geologist Dr Bob Carter puts the position succinctly here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/24/bob-carters-essay-in-fp-policymakers-have-quietly-given-up-trying-to-cut-%c2%adcarbon-dioxide-emissions/
To which I added this comment this morning (just for fun):
Wait, you are confusing people not wanting to pay for it with there being no danger.
I imagine if you gave people the choice not to pay for a police force a large number of them would choose not to pay for it.
Lolrot, Ironically, choosing not to pay for a police force is just what the climate debate is all about. You never actually hear yourself, do you? We do not need children turning their parents in to the carbon cops. Yet this is a discernible direction in the Green movement, is it not?
not really, people’s reluctance to pay for a fix doesn’t mean there’s no problem, nor is it evidence there is no problem – that would possibly be an appeal to popularity fallacy (derided on the last thread).
I am surprised as many as 30% were willing to pay more than $500 per year
http://ipa.org.au/news/2668/voters-strain-at-paying-for-even-small-carbon-cuts-
Ah I was going to suggest that, sometimes I think of things to say but forget to mention them. Of course in a survey when people don’t actually have to pay they are perhaps a bit more gung-ho about saying they would.
lolwot @ 9.50, one Oz survey of showed alleged willingness to pay to protect one Northern Territory asset – ?Kakadu – as exceeding all current spending on national parks, admission to wildlife parks, etc. Many surveys also show that people want to pay less tax.
That’s already the way it works. 51% of the population votes to make the other 49% pay the cost for public services. But wait, it’s even worse than that. 22% of U.S. households have zero tax liability. Another 30% get back more than they paid through refundable credits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit which can reduce taxes owed to less than zero.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jul/08/john-cornyn/john-cornyn-says-51-percent-american-households-pa/
In Australia in 2003-04, the lowest quintile paid 5.6% of taxes and received 41.1% of benefits; highest quintile 46.7% and 9.0%. The disparity will have increased since then, but I don’t know of more recent figures – these were in a March 2012 publication, “Right social justice; better ways to help the poor,” Gary Johns (ed) (a former Labor minister).
The tree of liberty evidently needs watering.
Dave;
You just jumped several steps up on the DHS threat list! Speaking of which, didja see this Bad Word list they use? —
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2150281/REVEALED-Hundreds-words-avoid-using-online-dont-want-government-spying-you.html
@BrianH
I was a sergeant in the United States Marine Corps. Volunteer. Viet Nam Era. In the past that was a good government list to be on. Since Janet Napolitano took over DHS for Obama my status changed from patriot whose country owes him a debt of gratitude for his service to individual at high risk of becoming a domestic terrorist. Isn’t that just precious?
Since the Left (see Cloward-Piven) uses deliberate systemic collapse as a tool to cause change (crisis→collapse→takeover), it is their assumption that anyone who wants them OUT of power will be willing to pull the temple down, too.
There are indications they are trying to precipitate just such an eventuality, while they have the power of the state to hand to react.
Veterans like yourself are presumed to be idealistic enough to be non-passive, and competent enough to be a threat. Hence your “listing”.
As an aside, I do not usually partake in the serial efforts to compel our fair hostess to take one position or another. I would like to note an anomaly though.
When criticizing consensus scientists’ behavior, the critique here is of the action, or the process. Hide the decline was dishonest, but no judgment on those who promulgated it. Climategate was evidence of bad behavior, not dishonest individuals.
On the other hand, when a skeptic does something deemed to be out of line, as with Heartland and their mischaracterized bill board, the criticism and condescending dismissal is of the actor, not just the behavior.
I don’t mean to go all Willis Eschenbach, and I understand the natural tendency to avoid insulting members of one’s own tribe.
But I’m just sayin’….
Anomaly worth noting.
On the one hand, a shillelagh; on the other, a NERF bat.
I wonder if it’s possible to be accidentally, or negligently, or innocently dishonest.
The Guardian as high minded arbiter? Headline:’ Peter Gleick lied but was it justified by the wider good?….perhaps more climate scientists should play dirty.’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/27/peter-gleick-heartland-institute-lie
“JC comments: I strongly agree with the following assessments:
And after nearly 30 years in operation, it is unclear what Heartland stands for when it comes to climate change – beyond resistance to putting any kind of restraint on business.
They are not built to be at the hump of the climate denial movement.”
This assumes there is a movement, called a climate denial movement.
And with any movement one has to have leaders.
And finally it assumes that movements are good things and something going on for decades.
For the Lefty you have to have the cause and the movement- and you have to be at war.
It’s all about gaining the shock troops, and storming the Bastille.
And another thing, it’s not a fair fight. The CAGW crowd are few and stupid.
CAGW is like the Occupy movement. And “like” might be exaggeration- they are the occupy movement.
So we have the a Tea Party all over again.
It seems to dim witted that the Tea Party has gone away, but meanwhile the Tea Party wins every election.
In the American Revolution, the America colonists were facing the most powerful nation on earth. That was a fight. That was a good war.
The French Revolution on the other hand, wasn’t a good war.
In terms wars it was pathetic, went nowhere, and involving unspeakable evil.
And it’s “the model” of the Left.
And of every failed revolution since that time.
Which started by not understanding the America Revolution.
It was not a failure to understand it, it wasn’t even attempted.
It was mania which had “inspiration”, which included fair amount groupthink or fashionable ideas.
The British King wasn’t oppressing the American colonists, because he failing to provide them with enough bread, the king started war- blockades, naval ships, soldiers, etc.
It wasn’t metaphorical.
Of course, bad governance lead to this point.
But bad governance is the norm. Good governance is only in comparison to really awful governance [murdering, cannibalism or whatever]. Or good government is the childish fairy tale of propaganda.
The Left tends to say they are against war, but are constantly engaged in war- or inciting useful idiots to engage in warfare.
They are like the English King who starts a war [the difference being King has paid soldiers who follow orders], and I suppose, the king had some twisted reasoning which assume it was somehow going to lead a peace. The King violated the natural rights of the colonist- the colonist were a dog, which the king was going beat with a stick, until such time, as….he had peace? The brilliance of the plan.
Two real differences explain the divergent courses the American and French revolutions took. First, the American Revolution was fomented by men who saw their course determined by an objective moralrity, outside the province of man. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights….”
While the French Declaration of the Rights of Man also referenced an outside objective morality – “In consequence, the National Assembly recognizes and declares, in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following rights of man and citizen,” its leaders were only paying lip service to concern with “natural rights” which, like “climate change” today, are to be defined by those in power.
The American Revolution was conservative in the modern sense, and the French Revolution was actually libertarian as that term is used today,
From the French Declaration:
“4. Liberty consists in the power to do anything that does not injure others; accordingly, the exercise of the rights of each man has no limits except those that secure the enjoyment of these same rights to the other members of society. These limits can be determined only by law.
5. The law has only the rights to forbid such actions as are injurious to society. Nothing can be forbidden that is not interdicted by the law, and no one can be constrained to do that which it does not order.”
Sound familiar? Sure doesn’t sound like anything one would find in the religious American colonies.
But the second difference between the two was just as important – George Washington vs. Napolean Bonaparte. Both of whom embodied their respective countries’ revolutionary ethos.
Washington, driven by humility and a sense of being constrained by the principles that embodied his revolution, declined a monarchy.
Napolean, the prototypical progressive, enacted the Napoleonic Code, but was unrestrained by any sense of humility or exterior source of morality, from imposing his will on as many people as his army allowed him to. And of course made himself an emperor.
To Washington, principle was primary. To Napolean, power.
Doesn’t that sound familiar too? All you progressives, moderates and independents seeking “libertarian” social values unmoored from the Judeo-Christian ethic, together with varying degrees of centralized government control, aren’t doing anything new. It’s all been done before. Many times. And it doesn’t end well.
“From the French Declaration:
“4. Liberty consists in the power to do anything that does not injure others; accordingly, the exercise of the rights of each man has no limits except those that secure the enjoyment of these same rights to the other members of society. These limits can be determined only by law.
5. The law has only the rights to forbid such actions as are injurious to society. Nothing can be forbidden that is not interdicted by the law, and no one can be constrained to do that which it does not order.”
Sound familiar? Sure doesn’t sound like anything one would find in the religious American colonies.”
Well, it’s basically the golden rule:
(Positive form): One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.
(Negative/prohibitive form, also called the Silver Rule): One should not treat others in ways that one would not like to be treated.
And:
“According to Simon Blackburn, although the Golden Rule “can be found in some form in almost every ethical tradition”, the rule is “sometimes claimed by Christianity as its own”. The “Golden Rule” has been attributed to Jesus of Nazareth: “Therefore all things whatsoever would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule
Whenever I do those political tests, I end up being strongly libertarian.
I think there is something wrong with anyone who wants to be in politics.
I think they should not be paid well- it might discourage them.
I am all for new ways of governing. But everything said to be new, isn’t.
So I favor the last new thing in governing, the great experiment.
David Wojak @9.05 pm:
The Green Movement comes straight from the pages of ‘1984.’ Heck, it’s their text book!
I try to avoid commenting much in topics of this type. I have little enough nice to say where there is no actual malice to talk about.
HI’s issues will blow over in time.
Any organization that can take the hit of past campaigns like “What is Endangered: Your Lungs or Your Freedom?” from the heyday of the Tobacco debacle can certainly survive (and exploit to its advantage) the slim notoriety of abusing the delusional schizophrenic psychopathology of mass murderers for political hay in stride.
I find HI much less objectionable than GWPF, for example. It’s relatively less deceptive in its practices, relatively less secretive, and relatively more principled, to my thinking.
Though I wouldn’t call that a recommendation.
OK, this is way off topic (although it’s from the Guardian, so maybe that’s OK), but just to show that we conservatives are aware that there are really stupid Republicans too, I commend to your attention the following blast of idiocy from New York Republicans.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/us-news-blog/2012/may/23/anonymous-comment-ban-new-york?newsfeed=true
“Online commenters aren’t exactly known for their kind words, but lawmakers in New York want to hold their constituents to a higher standard. A few Empire State lawmakers want to address that problem by doing away with anonymous commenting.
Identical bills in the senate and assembly require anonymous posts to be deleted by administrators of New York-based websites, including ‘social networks, blog forums, message boards, or any other discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages.'”
Good thing I live in a conservative state like Illinois. Oh wait….
Who should you trust? groups that promote debate, such as Heartland or groups that try to shut it down, such as Greenpeace, Mann and his ‘team,’ screaming Joe Romm, Al Gore etc…
Well. fan of *More* discourse, 24/05 10.07 pm, re your *literature* fram a mental health consultant in California:
‘An evaluation of homicidal ideation is a routine component of mental states examination and may be evaluated … as a *dangerousness* risk assessment.’
‘Violent fantasy dangerousness?’ That’s enough to make me fantasize about going after writers who massacre the language like this mental health consultant…Hmm, I was a pretty fast sprinter in my youth and you don’t forget…now where’s that lasso? I’ll give him *discourse.*
Yippee-yi-aye – I have been a little busy – but I was happy you you liked my Lake Illawarra poem the other day.
I thought I was the only one in your lasso sights? I get very jealous.
Catch you later
-vomit-
Do you have a problem David? Because your interjection is quite rude and quite unwelcome. I have noted you now – and your contribution is not terribly impressive is it?
The Heartlanders here are squirming like snakes in a frying pan.
Poor Wagathon is hysterical. I almost feel sorry for him.
Wojak is trying to convince people he isn’t on the y
take
Life can be harsh but I have to agree with Judith about the utility of organisations like Heartland. The billboard episode was not just an error of judgement it was a huge error of judgement, in public and one which bespoke hypocrisy and an end justifies the means attitude that actually made it past all the internal pre-examination at Heartland. It announced either a lack of awareness and political judgement about the negative implications of the billboard or an arrogant, who gives a s&$t attitude, Fakegate allows us licence to go hard.
The issue is essentially the same as that for the Hockey Stick, Hide the Decline and Fakegate which is maintaining one’s credit as a witness in the process.
In my judgement, the witness Heartland is excused.
The world of politics is a strange and dangerous place to be. Recently a senior British MP saw career disappear when it was revealed she’d claimed her telecom bill on expanses but unfortunately it also included the cost of two PPV porn movies (watched by her hubby, ouch). Forget the 20+ years she’d put into it.
Heartland occupy (occupied) this world. It seems these sorts of organisations exist because there are donor individuals or organisations that want to support this work while remaining at a distance from the fight. The downfall came when Heartland handed over the donor list to it’s enemies thus placing the donors exactly where they didn’t want to be. I suspect they were after another big splash following Fakegate to cement them as leaders in the debate. Instead it just highlighted them as a lose canon in the eyes of their donors. Hindsight suggests they misread the importance of Fakegate.
And thus the world of politics takes another scalp.
There is a certain amount of Schadenfreude to see these falls from grace so it seems foolish to deny the warmists their fun but the whole episode, Fakegate and The Billboard, seem peripheral to the real debate.
Here’s an interesting story in the FWinancial Times. It is about how the Fracking and Horizontal Drilling boom in the U.S. may have reduced the U.S. carbon footprint more than any number of European government mandates and gizmos:
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/3aa19200-a4eb-11e1-b421-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1vrAvLFzI
Meanwhile, the Guardian’s writers can only sniff that “it is unclear what Heartland stands for when it comes to climate change – beyond resistance to putting any kind of restraint on business.” This in spite of the fact that Heartland’s stated grand aim is to encourage decentralized solutions to various social problems.
I have to say that certain people just do not get the notions of spontaneous order, emergent properties, self-regulation and local governance. Maybe everyone in the physical sciences needs a remedial course covering basic ideas in evolutionary theory, game theory, general equilibrium and a bit of Hayek, topped off with some Schumpeter and maybe a bit of Ostrom as a palate cleanser for the heavy main course of Hobbes and Hardin they seem to have wolfed down with nary a second thought.
I’m sorry, NW, emissions reductions don’t count unless they involve non-viable alternative energy which won’t support an industrial economy, are government-driven and are heavily subsidised by taxpayers. The F&D boom fails on all counts.
Not that I give a rat’s patootie about “carbon footprint”, but in terms of reducing other (more or less real) environmental footprints (and vulnerabilities to Greenie hysteria and road-blocking), fracking has just made another huge advance: http://gasfrac.com . No water, no chemicals, huge yield improvements, slashed costs.
Heartland has turned into a sideshow and distraction. Some members perhaps well intentioned, but others obviously not. The fact that the billboard even happened, shows a gross lack of leadership. For honest discussion of the issues by a nicely balanced cross-section of those who have any interest in the climate change issue, this very blog is far and away more effective and honest.
R Gates
I have to agree with you. It is the warmists who are setting the agenda and writing the story, and for Heartland to provide them with the negative material that they did was a strategic mistake.
It may be different over in the States, but Heartland are, to me here in the UK, irrelevant in the climate debate. Which is not to say that there aren’t some very worthwile individual contributors.
tonyb
tony b
“Heartland” itself may be “irrelevant in the climate debate”, but the NIPCC report, which they among others sponsored, is not.
It provides a good critique of the claims made by IPCC in its AR4 report.
An even better and more concise critique was put together on a now-defunct Climate Audit thread and then summarized by Paul Matthews:
http://sites.google.com/site/globalwarmingquestions/ipcc
Cheers.
Max
Max
The trouble is that there is lack of credibility by association. The report might be exellent but first you have to overcome the credibility of its sponsor. As an example Phil Jones has written some good stuff but hes automatically screened out by many sceptics becuase of his name.
Never having authority in the first place or losing credibility subsequently, means that whatever Heartland produces has to try harder to be noticed.
tonyb
Paul happens to be a Reader of Mathematics at Nottingham University, perhaps able to teach CRU a thing ot too about maths?
Barry Woods
I think Pauls work is excellent. Perhaps we here in Britain need our own objective apolitical sceptical organisation and in this respect I don’t take much notice of gwpf, although again, individually, some of their material is very interesting.
Perhaps Sceptics are Marxists? By that I hastily add that, like Groucho Marx we don’t want to belong to a club that would have us as members :)
tonyb
The Heartland billboard, unlike Gleick’s actions, wasn’t illegal. Therein lies the only real difference. Otherwise both appear to be impulsive actions made possible by temporary lapses in judgement. That’s about the kindest way I can phrase it for both of them.
Yes, both actions were stupid and reflected arrogance and groupthink. No, legality was not the only difference. The world view was fundamentally different in each case. Heartland perceived themselves as besieged by well-funded environmentalist opponents who routinely resorted to ad hominem attacks which included broad-brush attempts at guilt by association. Peter G. perceived himself as besieged by a well-funded conspiracy of hypocritical pseudo-scientists backed by the fossil fuel industry. In the real world, Heartland’s diagnosis of their situation was fairly accurate; their choice of response was goofy. By contrast, Gleick’s diagnosis of his situation v. Heartland was goofy, not simply his actions.
The Heartland billboard controversy is blown way out of proportion since it was on a SINGLE billboard in a SINGLE long running corrupt city for only 24 hours but say little about truly dishonest scientists who blatantly manipulate data to make it fit with a particular view.
I am sure the Guardian cried to the heavens over Dr. Hansen’s well known manipulation on temperature data.I am sure they were distressed by Katharine Kayhoe’s many stupid statements about the weather/climate in the state of Texas or the very short memory powers of ANOTHER professor of Jeff Masters.
Steve Goddard exposed all three of these alleged professors as stupid people over what they say in the public arena.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/05/18/katharine-hayhoe-back-in-the-news/
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/hansen-the-climate-chiropractor/
http://www.real-science.com/is-jeff-masters-blind-in-one-eye
I am weary over the flood of blatantly dishonest and misleading statements that flood the media and pollutes science discussions.
Oh purlease. This is outrageous.
Your moral whining that “I am weary over the flood of blatantly dishonest and misleading statements that flood the media and pollutes science discussions.” is a sick joke after what you just pushed.
The first two graphs Steven Goddard compares are a graph of Northern Hemisphere Temperatures with A graph of 90N-23.6N temperatures. What’s that? Not the same thing is it. Close, but not the same. It’s strange because on the GISTEMP site Hansen has put Northern Hemisphere graphs. Why does Goddard pick a 90N-23.6N one instead? That’s sloppy at best.
But worse I suspect the first graph is Land Only – all of Hansen’s early graphs were meteorological stations only – No Ocean. He didn’t integrate ocean until later. So no wonder the graphs don’t match if one of NH land and ocean and the other is NH land above 23.6N. Apples and Oranges.
Furthermore with 30 years of development of the records, including possibly adding more stations and fixing errors in the algorithm the shape of the record could legitimately change. I mean are you saying Hansen’s early 80s initial temperature record work was 100% correct and so subsequent changes must be wrong? That’s backwards. If anything the earlier work is more prone to error.
But the real icing on the cake is how Goddard and yourself ignore the other records, like BEST and CRU which also don’t show Goddard’s mythical cooling which he thinks Hansen has omitted. Because those other records totally destroy your claims that Hansen has fudged the GISTEMP data. he doesn’t have a hand in CRU or BEST records so how could he manage to “fix” them as well according to your conspiracy theory?
Puuurleaze go home, get a clue and stop being so damn incompetent. Or at least stop whining and playing the moral victim when it’s you who are pushing misinformation.
Thanks for being a prime example that there’s something wrong with climate skeptics ability competently assess data. Anyone on the fence should realize that the incompetence displayed here is similarly at play when it comes to interpreting certain climate emails.
Goddard is wrong about Hansen as I have pointed out many times.
You are wrong to defend what we have seen in the mails.
Anyone on the fence who can see that Goddard is wrong about data
and that you are wrong about the mails, will probably stay right on the fence or lose interest altogether
I don’t think that it’s so clear that “I am wrong” about the mails.
With the data it’s as clear as day obvious. Comparing apples and oranges is clearly wrong. Comparing CRU vs GISTEMP vs BEST which logically shows GISTEMP hasn’t been fudged (else all of them have) is also clear and simple logic. Takes all of 5 minutes to figure out something is amiss.
The emails are far more tricky to interpret as in many cases the context isn’t available and people end up guessing what it means. The trenberth travesty email is a case in point with the context being in a referenced paper but lots of skeptics just take a certain quote as being useful rather than caring about that.
As a very interested follower of global warming and the scientific studies over the past several years it is easy to see that the data is being plainly manipulated. Temperature and sea level graphs keeping changing every few years and ALWAYS to make AGW appear worse. In 1998, the widely accepted temperature graph (even by the IPCC in the 1990s) which shows the MWP and LIA, disappears and Mann’s hockey stick shows up. Historical temperature graphs for the US for the years 1900-1970 have undergone at least two revisions since 1998, in both cases to make AGW appear worse.Temperature history in Iceland is tampered with to show warming that never happened. Satellite era level change graphs morph with time, the most extreme case being Envisat which up until recently showed almost no sea level rise at all from 2000-2012, but now suddenly after 10+ years, a “correction” is applied and sea level rise accelarate by a factor of 3. Envisat before the correction was corroborated by hundreds of ground based tide gauges, all showing no significant sea level rise. You tell me, you really think the correction made to Envisat more accurately reflects reality? I can go on with many more examples but I won’t at the moment.
Well, yes, it could be that every scientist in the world is manipulating every piece of data (sea level, land temp’s, sea temp’s ,satellite measurments, OHC, onset of spring, bore hole records etc), or that you are a delusional conspiracy-mongering whack-job.
Occams Razor says………..
The only delusional conspiracy-mongering whack-jobs are those who claim government science is NOT skewed and fiddled towards findings that justify more government.
Yes – government climate scientists in secret cabals where they behave with integrity and objectivity, ignoring the vested interest of their paymaster who carefully selected them to advance government, and against the spirit of the end-justifies-the-means leading lights of the crooked IPCC cadre so clearly illuminated in Climategate.
Sadoof,
You do realise that most science since WWII has been funded by the {cue: creepy music}….. government!! In the US – ONR, especially.
All sorts of amazing stuff has it’s orgins completely, or in signifcant part, from govt funded research – space travel, satellites, internet, air travel, medical advances to name just a tiny number of high profile examples.
Is all skewed and fiddled??.
Or……are you one of these looney, govt-is-evil, libertarian ultras, projecting your narrow ideological blitherings onto the rest of the world?
Occams Razor says………..
Michael
You do understand vested interest don’t you? And that Occam’s Razor deosn’t give you leave to just ignore it? And the combined effect of vested interest and being the monopoly funder in question?
You do also realize that not every field is like climate science, which has very obvious and very large vested implications for the state, hence the bias and cheating its climate scientists show.
Or……are you one of these looney, govt-is-heavenly, far-left totalitarian ultras, projecting your narrow ideological blitherings onto the rest of the world? All the while claming Occam as an ally…
Shifting ground Sadoof?
First it was “govt funded science is skewed and fiddled’, without a hint of equivocation.
Now it’s just ‘climate science’??
Occams Razor is slicing you to shreds.
No, not shifting ground Michael, obviously. But I guess I do owe you an apology for not pointing out this is a blog on climate science.
Oh, and since you clearly also haven’t the foggiest idea what Occam’s razor is, you’d best find out soonest.
I look forward to your further twisiting and squirming to explain how ‘govt funded climate scientists’ come to different conclusions about their ‘vested interests’ than do a bunch (much larger) of other ‘govt funded scientists’.
Popcorn is ready.
Your squirming attempts to wriggle out of admitting the bias you are so obviously in love with, seems to have driven you to try and equate an overall organizational bias, with the position of each and every individual in it. No doubt because Occam’s Razor says so, eh ?
Poor sadooof, so confused!
“…driven you to try and equate an overall organizational bias, with the position of each and every individual in it. ”
That was your initial argument!
No, it’s just the strawman your simpleton desperation seeks to put there.
Hansen changes his data all the time. No doubt all versions all correct, even if the show the opposite trend at the same location.
http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/1998changesannotated.gif?w=500&h=355
Your argument doesn’t hold water. Due to polar amplification, the shape of the graph is controlled by the high latitudes.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/06/01/mathematically-challenged-lukewarmers/
it was on a SINGLE billboard in a SINGLE long running corrupt city for only 24 hours
Is this really true? I am not sure, but I think I saw the Charles Manson version of the billboard in St. Louis. Is my memory faulty?
Bureau-speak is jest another form of language abuse.
Captain Kangaroo, 11.09 pm, getting you in my lasso sights would be very difficult, lol. Yer many masks and blue pony give you a tactical advantage.
I did like the poem. ‘If I could wait like a stone on the shore, / fast dissolution in the storms of time,/ If I could break the barrier of light/ to freeze the instant…’
Rich connotations and patterning , Chief, I mean Kanga… ‘weight, break,’ tension between instant and infinite. ( First I always like to let the poem speak to me, then later I like to see how it works, parts to whole. It enhances my enjoyment. Some people don’t like to do this, I know.)
Climatereason @ 11.49pm:
Hearing the words,
Time Team ‘ to me is like Gomez in tha Adams Family listening to Morticia speak French! i love this BBC program, I love the Time Team’s enthusiasm, a bunch of daggy archaeologists’ committment to what they do. Phyl is so like my Dad, robust humour, empiric data rules, ( only my father was tall and better looking :-) )
Hi Beth
I was involved with the fundraising for rebuilding our local museum and one of the Time Team came to our opening.Yes, full of infectious enthsiasm.
They had come here 30 years previously to carry out an underwater survey of a shipwreck. I’m not sure if you can access this from oz but its worthwhile trying
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/time-team/episode-guide/series-3/episode-4
Both Sir Walter Raeigh and Sir Francis Drake were born here in Devon and the painting of Raleigh in the link below shows him on a local beach that is still recognisable today
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Raleigh
Our previous house was reckoned to contain timbers from the wreckage of the Spanish Armada
tonyb
I wrote to Phil Harding to congratulate him on his honorary doctorate and he wrote back, a personal note of several paragraphs! You can all keep your Elvis autographs, I wouldn’t swap.
I love Time Team, and especially that they always have a few skeptics (not least Tony Robinson) to keep the wilder speculations of the archaeologists in check. They have been doing some industrial archaeology lately, which is wonderful. Although, the last one I saw was about the copper refining industry in Wales, where they insisted on drawing connections with the slave trade and were very upset that the workers in the 1700s mostly died around 40. They didn’t mention that peasants in the countryside were much poorer and died even younger. Oh well – PC reigns even at TT.
johanna
It was indeed Phil Harding who opened the museum. A very nice down to earth man
tonyb
It is instructive, given that we talk about science and scientists on this blog, to consider the career of Phil Harding. This guy is a real scholar, although he left school at 16. He has spent almost half a century doing archaeology and writing it up. Compare and contrast with the thousands of graduates (including PhDs) in his field who have made little, if any, actual contribution to the sum of knowledge in their field. And, that’s not even counting the PR work he has done through TT and attending events like your museum opening, which I understand he does frequently.
It is shameful that snobby universities like Cambridge and Oxford shower honorary degrees on all kinds of dubious characters while ignoring the likes of Phil Harding. It was his local university that finally stepped up to acknowledge his contribution. I bet Phil could hold his own in any academic discussion, anywhere, in his specialist field of palaeo-archaeology, and whup them all at flint-knapping in the tea breaks.
Game 1:
Heartland: 1
Gleick: 0
Game 2:
Heartland: 1
IPCC: 0?
I fear extra time and a penalty shoot-out.
As usual, Heartland is seen as biased for accepting money from the coal industry, but the the climate establishment is not seen as biased for accepting money from politics – money perhaps 10000 times larger in magnitude.
It’s entirely normal and reasonable for governments to fund research, on climate and nummerous other topics. And governments don’t have any vested interest in the outcome of climate research other than wanting the best and most accurate results. I expect most governments would rather the AGW issue just went away.
Are you kidding? You must have very little knowledge of governments. The CAGW issue has been a god-send to centralising, high-taxing, interventionist left-wing governments, the “best and most accurate” results are not wanted. (I write as someone who has advised Prime Ministers in two countries and was driven out of government as someone whose “honesty, integrity, intellect and analytical rigour” were seen as threats at higher levels.)
Indeed. Over time, often not all that much time, the goals of any organization morph into self-aggrandizement and longevity. This applies à fortiori to governments, especially their ‘civil services’, which outlast ministers and administrations by large factors.
To imagine them opposing or funding opposition to anything tending to advance their purview is to wallow in delusion.
“governments don’t have any vested interest in the outcome of climate research”
An utterly ludicrous claim. The state as a whole stands to benefit hugely from climate alarmism, by getting an excuse to raise taxes, create new laws and bureaucracies. As such the scientists it selects and employs can be expected to favor alarmist conclusions.
Leaving aside the question of whether governments neccesasarily want to do these things, why in that case are so many governments’ policies on climate change either half-hearted or non-existent? Why haven’t the world’s governments been able to put a more concrete agreement together at Copenhagen/Cancun/Durban?
He said new laws and bureaucracies, not a more concrete agreements. People working for governments work for themselves and it’s always destructive for the government itself in the long run.
But surely if governments are intent on implementing new laws and bureaucracies then they would welcome the chance to sign up to international agreements which would give them extra “cover” – “we have to do this in order to meet our obligations under the Copenhagen protocol”.
And why did the Bush administration spend billions on research into climate but do its utmost to reject the need to take action, to the point of doctoring scientific reports and trying to muzzle scientists who spoke out on the subject.
And why did the scientists themselves, if they are so intent on appeasing their political paymasters in order to protect their research grants not just toe the government line?
That’s the conspriacy within the conspiracy!
For the same reason every administration keeps control over what various agencies say on a variety of topics. If you think it was something specific to the Bush administration, just start listening about 4:00 into the video and you can hear Hansen complaining about the Clinton administration.
But the fact still remains that the government spent billions on climate research but obviously did not want to use it as a pretext to create new laws and bureaucracies, nor were scientists merely content to toe the line in order to protect their research grants.
It is called having a boss Andrew. We have all had one at some time or another. If you can’t deal with having a boss start your own business and listen to your complaining employees instead of being one (shrug).
Leaving aside the state’s primary motivator of self-interest, as Andrew Adams bizarrely requests, why have states not managed to make more progress in climate “action” ?
Because, thanks in part to the internet, it is increasingly clear that the politically-funded ‘science’ that underpins alarmism is heavily politicised, and riddled with secrecy and fraud. And while many people do go along with the increasingly totalitarian nature of the modern world, and are thus happy to accept any old reason for more government, a sizeable number still value a society as free as possible.
Far more damaging than Climategate itself, were the coverups and refusal to sack the obvious crooks like of Mann and Jones and the other IPCC lot, since this showed that the revealed malpractices were not just the antics of a few, but were seen acceptable by the climate science rank and file. IOW, it isn’t that just a few apples are rotten, it’s pretty much the whole barrel.
Thankgod for the internet and wild, evidence-free assertion masquerading as informed opinion.
Go Team!
Indeed – the internet has helped expose climate ‘science’ for what it is.
Another, perhaps deeper, factor is that the claims and mitigation proposals of the CAGWists are, respectively, drivel and patently ineffective. Every attempt to implement them turns immediately into a financial black hole, with no realistic prospect of any benefits escaping its event horizon.
After a little while, people notice.
Tony b @4,08:
OMG!
Heartland need to know that they can have all the Tea Party types in the whole US of A on side with stunts like the billboard but out in the rest of voter land they are shuffling away in embarrassed distaste.
I always imagined heartland USA to be hardworking, independent minded and tough but not populated solely by rednecked buffoons.
If Heartland want to be effective as a focus for the fight against the AGW alarmists then they had better start to think coalition with a broad front and focus the effort on the actual debate, the actual science and the actual AGW alarmist loonies. Like the fellow who was sprung for having molested one of his livestock, pleading “one little mistake” is not going to be enough.
Tea Party type huh?. You mean an older white male with above average education and income. Slightly more religious than the population in general? Or perhaps you have a different vision in your mind
Sorry, I didn’t mean to link this version. It is rather monotonous. Sort of like the comments about Tea Party types.
You missed out the “very right wing” part.
Well, they are probably very right about at least some things. Might be very wrong about others, I really haven’t paid that much attention to them. As a former Perot supporter from prehistory days I do at least have sympathy on the complaints regarding letting the deficit continue to build. I am suprised you think they are very right about everything :)
I don’t think they are very “right” about anything, but they are very “right wing” about most things.
Yes, I read what you said. I decided to purposely misinterpret it for my own amusement. If you don’t state exactly what you find right wing about them there really isn’t any room for further conversation.
Actually, the Heartland billboard was not nearly as bad as the video of children blowing up because they weren’t “green” enough. There are countless lefty aggressions out there and a lot more watermelon NGOs. All this whining about the billboard reminds me of the song, “Blue on Black.” A whisper on a scream, etc. What we on the right need to go after is the Soros institute. That is the heart of the lefty beast.
jim2: Actually, the Heartland billboard was not nearly as bad as the video of children blowing up because they weren’t “green” enough.
Maybe, but comparing one extremist PR disaster to another extremist PR disaster is pointless. There is nothing to be gained by copying the PR disasters of your political opponents.
I’m not so sure you are right, Mattstatt. The left has been wallowing in the mud for many years and they have made progress. It does no good to take the high road if the morons are winning – sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.
jim2: sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.
It sounds like you are trying to defend what was obviously a mistake.
It seldom works to fight inanity with inanity.
To err is Human, to forgive, Divine.
Gleick’s bullet was a like that from Japanese soldiers on isolated Pacific Islands still fighting after Japan had surrendered because they didn’t get the news of the surrender. Heartland won. The climate change business is drying up because there’s little left to fight. Maybe Europe and Australia still have live battles but the war is over in the U.S. The only thing that will brink the AGW bandwagon out of the ashes like Phoenix rising is the actual climate. If the climate doesn’t start doing dire things it’s all over for the boogeyman-CO2 crowd. They’ll need a new man-made castastrophe to rally around for their next attempt to become saviors of Mother Earth. As it turns out she didn’t need saving in this instance. I always knew this would be how the AGW movement died. There was no possible way they could effect enough reduction in CO2 emission to make a difference and unless the earth’s so-called fever didn’t continue to rise along with CO2 the charade would be exposed. It’s been 15 years since any significant rise in global average temperature and CO2 has continued its upward march an increased another 10% during those 15 years. The theory is deader than a doornail. Get used to it. Sources of money for both sides of the climate wars are drying up.
PJMedia has just come out with a summary of the meeting (very different from what the Guardian has to say)
http://pjmedia.com/blog/the-climate-change-debate-where-are-we-now/
The best summary I’ve read because, like James Sensenbrenner at the conference, it didn’t mention the billboard. There are much more important things.
The swansong of Heartland’s politically outdated and culturally paranoid Cold War era mentality should be liberating to any real libertarians.
Thoughtful libertarians support justice and don’t support Heartland or their authoritarian and doctrinaire right-wing beliefs and activities. They never have.
And to be honest, neither has anyone with any insight, regardless of political beliefs.
Thinking people of all persuasions realize the driving force in the the whole CAGW argument is 95% politics (a consequence of its political funding). It is a concerted drive to – under guise of the (politically-funded) science – push a totalitarian agenda – putting more and more of life under political control.
It may indeed be “outdated” to oppose this assault on a free society, and Heartland may not have done the best job of it, but it is surely still better than nothing.
Martha, Wouldn’t this be you: ‘politically outdated and culturally paranoid Cold War era mentality should be liberating to any real libertarians.’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/secondaryeducation/9289401/Touching-the-Void-climber-bombarded-with-abuse-by-school-children.html
This poor guy was cut loose and Left for dead by his best friend and still little kids still don’t like him. At least he got a good three book deal, Too bad he hates kids, maybe it shows too. Everybody wants to see and learn today, just to better themselves for tomorrow.
tweet-tweet-tweet.)
Climatewire has maybe the most balanced article on Heartland, with subtitle “Climate change contrarians are trying to craft a softer, more nuanced message about global warming — that it is real but insignificant. This follows a seismic reply to a surprise public relations stunt that shook loose many of the Heartland Institute’s funders.”
http://www.midwestenergynews.com/2012/05/24/at-heartland-conference-attendees-try-for-subtler-climate-message/
Dr. Curry, I hope you don’t consider The Guardian and DeSmog to be credible sources of information about Heartland. They’re both highly partisan propagandistic outlets in this political debate. Discussions about Heartland drive both sites to near apoplexy, and I believe both were on Peter Gleick’s list of 15 “friends” to whom he sent the stolen (and 1 forged) Heartland documents in February.
You began this post with Ross McKitrick’s quote about the Heartland billboard flap. You also could have mentioned that Donna Laframboise similar comments and her cancelation of her appearance at the conference. You could have mentioned Anthony Watts’ condemning statements and his hosting of a (unscientific) poll for rating Heartland’s action on WUWT. Almost 75% of WUWT readers voted that Heartland’s billboard was ill advised (I think the term used was “stupid blunder”). I was heartened to see the way the skeptics side of the debate immediately denounced Heartland’s billboard and it’s use of a logical fallacy. And even though Heartland hemmed and hawed a bit, they DID remove the billboard. They made a mistake, but in the end, they were capable of being shamed.
Joe Romm and many other media voices on the CAGW side of the debate reacted strongly against Heartland’s billboard, but I see nothing from them concerning the same behavior from ClimateProgress, when for a year they’ve equated “deniers” to Norwegian mass child murderer Andrew Breivik. The Heartland billboard flap shows the skeptical side of this debate to be ethical (on balance) and concerned about using fallacious techniques in the political and scientific debate.
Mickey,
That’s all well said. I’ve had the same reaction to the skeptical community’s near universal condemnation of HI”s ill -considered billboard. Makes me feel proud to be a “denier.”
As to Dr. C’s decision to quote two of the mostly highly partisan sources imaginable to support her own views of HI (if I’m reading the blog post properly), I simply do not understand it. Perhaps she doesn’t always have time to fully consider the implications of some of her decisions, or perhaps she’s being deliberately provocative (though I don’t think so). Or perhaps her mind just doesn’t work like most people’s. I’ve seen her give the benefit of the doubt over and over to people I certainly wouldn’t. I just think her natural instinct is to think well of people. She’s certainly the least partisan person I’ve ever run across.
Do I use the word “people” enough in the above?
lolwot “But launching temperatures into a super-interglacial with temperatures breaching millions of years highs – this is unprecedented for many millions of years. And happening in mere centuries – this is a recipe for disaster. ”
They try to pathologize, (and now sometimes even make noises about criminalizing) “climate denial.” But this is truly tin foil hat stuff worthy of that nut case Hansen himself. You’d just as productively sit around fretting about another ice age, or nuclear war, or some super volcano erupting. There are plenty of apocalyptic scenarios, some will within the realm of possibility. Just curious as to why you feel compelled to pick this one. Or do you worry about them all in equal measure.
What I say is very reasonable and mainstream. Tin foil hat would be to imagine a doubling of CO2 would have no impact on global temperature.
If global temperature rises even 2C in the next 200 years we’ll breach millions of year highs. Sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 doesn’t have to be very high to achieve 2C more warming, and I suspect it’ll be more than that even.
“Just curious as to why you feel compelled to pick this one.”
Because it seems likely it will happen given the ongoing increase in greenhouse gas levels. A super volcano in the next 300 years on the other-hand is exceedingly unlikely.
exceedingly unlikely?
http://www.thetotalcollapse.com/volcanologist-warns-of-super-volcano-threat/
other put the risk at 1 in 10000 by 2100
Sparks, S. and Stephen Self. Super-Eruptions: Global Effects and Future Threats. June
2005. Geological Society of London, Burlington House
of course since we are talking total destruction and 100’s of millions deaths.. the risk times the cost is pretty high. precautionary principle says.. feed virgins to volcanoes
well I was just going on a historical basis. How often does a super volcano happen vs the chance of one happening specifically in the next 100 years? Quite low.
But of course if someone has actual evidence that one is likely to happen very soon then that would be different.
Here you go lolwot, First…
2Pe 3:3 Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, (scoffers~done, just watch TV)
& soon after this…
Rev 16:18 And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, [and] so great.
earthquakes are the sign of coming judgements upon man in one book.
We all should read. Some people may not like what they read, so they want to stick with the comics?:o)
Time is hard to judge from here now.
dude sunday is tommorow
Yes,…
http://judaism.about.com/od/sabbathdayshabb2/
thank you.
Do Americans not realise how much of a joke paper the Guardian is?
Citing it is the most cognitively challenged or lazy thing one could do on a scientific blog.
That’s Ok… global warming ceased being about science a long time ago so the Guardian or the LA Times or the NY Times — no difference: the Medium is the Message.
One thing our founders never foresaw is that the day would come when not just government bureaucrats but even scientists would cease having respect for truth.
We are treated to the AGW True Believers of the Left who fear CO2, over-population, second-hand smoke, hamburgers, nuclear power, melting glaciers, dying polar bears, food shortages, sinking islands, storms… even cold weather. The defamation of conservatism by aging hold hippies who miss wearing flags on their arses has resulted in an undermining of honor and ethics in science. That is why those in their ivory towers from Greece to California need to take a haircut for the good of the future of humanity. We just can’t afford to continue paying to treat what they suffer from — Hot World Syndrome — when the quickest and most effective treatment is to simply cut down the public-funded Towers of Babble where this disease is spreading from..
New Age Hippies Undermined Honor and Ethics in Science http://wp.me/p27eOk-a1
I gave up on that grand supporter of Heartland ,WUWT, when they started to prioritise right wing propaganda over good science. It was tragic to see a good site metamorphosise into a Pravda for the Tea party. Some of the opinions and articles are extremely worrying from a reasonable political stance and undermine the skeptic cause by more than Mann and co could ever dream.
Being an independent I am interested in your perspective.
What is the right wing propaganda over good science? Is it propaganda by the right wing for someone to not believe that Hansen’s conclusions are unsupportable based upon the science?
What is the Tea Party position? I was not aware that there really was a Tea Party with a formalized platform of positions on issues?
I think the Tea Party is against science authoritarians in the EPA getting away with destroying the economy by simply labeling CO2 as a poison.
Dr. Gleick, is that you?
“The Yale survey divvied up respondents into Democrats, Republicans, independents, and Tea Partiers. Self-identified Tea Party types make up just 12 percent of the country, but they tend to be the fiercest global-warming deniers: “Majorities of Democrats (78%), Independents (71%) and Republicans (53%) believe that global warming is happening. By contrast, only 34 percent of Tea Party members believe global warming is happening, while 53 percent say it is not happening.”
And
http://ashlandohteaparty.com/index.php/rss-news-feeds/13-rss/78-watts-up-with-that.html
I’ve seen this before but I have never seen the actual questions. Of course Tea Party people claim to be well informed on global warming compared to the general public so they may have suspected that answering any question of this type with a yes would eventually end up in another completely out of context 97% believe poll result.
If letter grades were given by the survey’s authors (based on absolute scores, not grading on the curve), 1 percent would have received an A, 7 percent a B, 15 percent a C, 25 percent a D and 52 percent an F. Shocker!
a Pravda for the Tea party being what… the Federalist Papers? Is that you Kaczynski?
Garethman: Some of the opinions and articles are extremely worrying from a reasonable political stance and undermine the skeptic cause by more than Mann and co could ever dream.
It would be helpful if you would provide some examples. The worst propaganda I personally can recall at WUWT is defense of civil liberties and openness in government.
This article is off topic, but deals with an issue that pops up here not infrequently. Maybe we can take time off from pillorying the evil predations of Heartland with its billboard, and recall the beatific history of progressive ideology.
http://yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/2012_05/feature_eugenics.html
It’s an article written by a Yale alum on the history of eugenics in the progressive movement.
“These eugenicists also felt disturbingly familiar in other ways. They weren’t sinister characters out of some darkly lighted noir film about Nazi sympathizers, but environmentalists, peace activists, fitness buffs, healthy-living enthusiasts, inventors, and family men.”
Interestingly, the article notes that eugenics was all the rage at those conservative bastions of Harvard and Yale. And its more luminous progressive proponents included Woodrow Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt (and yes, Teddy started out in the GOP, like all too many progressives, but he went on to form the Progressive Party), and Margaret Sanger. Hardly the whacko fringe.
There is a similarity in the feelings of superiority that run among those of a progressive bent, running the gamut from owning slaves, to using government to ruin other people’s lives, to using government to thin the heard of undesirables (whether using the 10:10 or Margaret Sanger methods).
So I’ll see your Heartland’s billboard making fun of the pomposity of CAGW claims to moral superiority, and raise you the real, disgraceful, history of the progressive movement, aka the environmentalist/green/climate change/Democrat movement.
Gary,
Beautifully expressed. As lifelong NYT’s reading, Greenpeace contributing, progressive democrat, I’m only now beginning to wake up to the dangerous piety and self-rigtheousness of the Left. It’s been pretty shattering, though I don’t believe the other end of the spectrum is any better.
pokerguy,
Your comment shows that the steady diet of NYTimes filtered “news” has had a lasting effect. “…I don’t believe the other end of the spectrum is any better.”
Progressives like Sanger and Wilson are not one end of the spectrum. They are flush in the middle of the mainstream left. Barack Obama, as an Illinois legislator, voted against a bill that would have required healthcare professionals to attempt to save the life of an infant who had survived a failed abortion. Barbaric, but completely mainstream.
On the floor of the U.S. Congress, you regularly have Democrat office holders claiming Republicans want to kill women and children, poison the water and air. Bring back Jim Crow (which was a wholly Democrat policy).
Hatred, vilification, deceit, these are all tactics used by mainstream progressives, not the left end of the spectrum. But you will not find that among mainstream conservatives. Ever heard Fred Thompson, Ronald Reagan,Sarah Palin or William F. Buckley talk that way? No. But Teddy Kennedy, Tip O’Neill, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama all talk (or talked) like that about conservatives on a regular basis.
“Both sides do it” is just another bit of progressive agitprop that is repeated so often it has been swallowed whole by progressives, moderates, and independents, all the millions of people who get their “news” from the same places you do (or did).
There is no symmetry in the overall political debate, any more than there is in the microcosm of that debate called the climate wars.
There really is a right and wrong in the world, Virginia.
GaryM, you might be interested in this piece, which covers some of the same ground.
“All those erudite people and their studies, research and papers, lent a spurious legitimacy and authority to the whole thing and having laid that essential groundwork, facilitated what inevitably followed. They all got away with it too. Every last one of them.”
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/the-real-bastards/
Pointman
Kaczynski, Goreczynski… who cares about that? Didn’t Bin Laden blame the America for Climate Change too or was that just the NY Times being the Pravda of the Left when they reported that?
The waters that are taking down dead and dying Old Europe are already swirling and the Left believes there is some political advantage to be gained by going after Heartland?
After years of sniping at the heels of America and two terms of clawing the country’s eyes out because Bush stood tall against the UN and Kyoto the Left’s pogrom against Heartland is about as serious as a cat fight.
The productive have a lot more on their plate than Heartland getting bombed by Leftinians. The businessraelis are getting pasted everyday by an EPA and a secular, socialist bureaucracy that hates capitalism and is directing the economy to take the Castro-Chavez highway to Mao’s bridge to nowhere.
Wagathon, nine factors that distinguish Hansen’s work from the abusive slogan-shouting of ideology-obsessed nutjobs (like Kaczynski and Breivik, to name two homicidal ideologues) are readily evident in Hansen’s recent publications:
• the work is peer-reviewed,
• available “free-as-in-freedom“,
• publicly available “free-as-in-freedom,”
• co-authored with dozens of experts,
• respectful of the existing literature,
• closely and quantitatively reasoned,
• clearly and politely expressed,
• explicitly predictive of future events, and
• archived permanently and unalterably.
Frankly, we’d all be better off, if Hansen’s skeptics embraced these same nine practices. Because there’s nothing preventing this, eh?
Conversely, if it should happen Hansen’s predictions of (for example) accelerating sea-level rise are born out in coming years, then in consequence of Hansen’s present foresighted scrupulous adherance to the above nine principles, it will be “game over” for climate-change skepticism.
Which is pretty obviously Hansen’s plan. Simple eh? And if Hansen’s science is right, ia plan that is utterly unstoppable.
Which is the real reason why thoughtful sponsors are abandoning the Heartland Institute. It’s because the Heartland Institute has no counter-strategy to Hansen’s that is comparably effective, dignified, and foresighted,
Before disastrous global warming Hansen was predicting disastrous global cooling. But, there’s more money in disastrous global warming. Follow the money.
Wagathon, fewer-and-fewer folks still believe bizarre claims like “before disastrous global warming Hansen was predicting disastrous global cooling.”
That is part of the reason for the Heartland Institute’s strategic backfire … a paucity of citations to back their claims.
So if you’ve got a Hansen citation to the contrary, particularly from any year prior to Hansen’s 1981 … well heck … gratify us by posting it! :)
Oh Joy!
As far as I know it was only his model that was used by Rasool and Schneider. Of course I can’t really say why the model would produce diffferent result because someone else typed in the data, but hey I’m no modeling expert.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/173/3992/138.abstract
So, let me see if I understand what you mean. Are you saying that the Washington Post printed in 1971 should just be ignored in 2012 like the Guardian printed in 2012 should be ignored in 2012?
Hi Joy,
You need to read more broadly.
Cheers
Dr. Curry: I am dismayed at your display of schadenfreude over Heartland’s problems. I had thought better of you.
Yeah, what would Karl Marx do?
Let’s have a reality check here.
Has Heartland lied, stolen and decieved?
No, even their billboard told the truth. Even if that truth was coarse and unpalatable to some.
Can the same be said for the alarmist propoganda gang?
Well, someone’s colours have finally been nailed to the mast …
Pointman
Never a doubt…
Andrew
beesaman: No, even their billboard told the truth.
The billboard was a terrible and costly mistake. The “truth” is that if you have an opinion there is a murderer somewhere who agrees with you. Judging you by that murderer is infantile.
Truth is, Kaczynski was sending bombs to professors so he obviously was a murderer but he agrees with you that humans cause global warming. Is that what murderers do?
Alarmists are trying to sell us all a message that the science is settled and that all the smart (good) people are on message whereas all the stupid (bad) people are skeptics. Heartland’s billboard turned that message on its head and boy do the alarmist hate that. Hence their puerile attacks, the debate is not over!
This is going to be a close-run battle. The 30 year Marxist plan to use false science to justify de-industrialisation of the West has been rumbled but the momentum is massive, based on O’Barmy’s climate propaganda to satisfy the carbon traders. Few realise it but the two supranational currencies, Euro, Amero, were supposed to be based on carbon trading. The former is within days of possible collapse as Germany refuses to wreck its economy.
The scam was based on taking 19th Century physics and claiming it to be peer reviewed, plus other mistakes. Hansen et. al 1981 accepted Fourier’s ’33 K’ claim of present GHG warming when in reality it’s ~9 K, Houghton 1986 used used Schwarzchild’s two-stream physics which cannot apply at heterogeneous boundaries then compounded the error by falsely claiming Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium gives black body radiation from the lower atmosphere, although he later introduced grey body physics.
Thus we have the ludicrous Perpetual Motion Machine of the 2nd order in the 2009 Energy Budget: energy multiplier 2.4, IR 15.5. No engineer who sees it accepts it can be true. The final mistake was to use pyrgeometers to measure ‘back radiation’ when they are pyrometers mislabelled with units of power.
There’s another error at TOA where Kirchhoff’s Law of Radiation does not apply. Emissivity DOWN << emissivity UP. [The mechanism is straightforward but you have to fix the broken IR physics first, and it'll take too long to explain.] This means you don't need the back radiation mistake.
So, in the run up to Rio there's panic in the warmist ranks. Look for a false flag incident as politicians squirm in the wreckage of failed climate science.
That is what happens when scientists treat the scientific method like Leftists treat Jesus. There are consequences. Science may have nothing to do with religeon but it has everything to do with respect for truth and in his own way I think Dostoevsky probably said it best: “The West has lost Christ and that is why it is dying; that is the only reason.”
During the Wisconsin teachers protests, there were signs comparing anyone who wished to limit the collective bargaining of public unions for long-term benefits. Yes, the people who are charged with teaching our children how to think. So has public education now lost all credibility?
This is interesting:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/25/joe-bast-responds-to-dr-judith-currys-post-on-heartland/
Some useful corrections to the Greenspin.
I think Bast did a great job of rebutting. He strikes me as a smart, level-headed guy. Also confident. Which is the impression I got from the speakers I listened to at the conference.. There’s no question they’re convinced they’re winning, a conviction I share.
Looks like the reports of Heartland’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. I am sure that Judith will add Bast’s response to this post.
I’d be very surprised if she did not.
*…comparing anyone who wished to limit bargaining right… to Nazi’s*
I suppose the billboard incidence and the close links between right wing politics and skepticism help many people like myself to reach conclusions on the climate science debate. Most sites such as Skeptical Science or WUWT are obsessively one sided in the debate and are biased in what they do not publish, rather than what they do. So how does one arrive at a conclusion? When a skeptic side uses politics to demonstrate it’s ideas and beliefs, and sees the other side of the debate as just being leftist/communist or whatever I suspect that the skeptical side is deeply involved in right wing capitalist thinking. The other side, warmists if you will , appear to use science to a much greater extent than politics, and don’t dismiss skeptics as right wing oddballs to the same extent, although it occasionally happens. A review of this thread will see a much higher incidence of personal; attacks against believers in climate science, than from believers to skeptics, along with allegations of Marxism etc. I must admit, the skeptic side in this thread does read like a re-run of McCarthyism, and could even form the plot of a new version of the Crucible. Incidentally, anyone who really thinks Obama is a left wing politician has probably never travelled outside the US and does not really understand politics. So as a result, although having some reservation regarding climate change science and seeing a lot of denial from the believers side in correcting mistakes, I think the believers are on the right track and the Heartland institute tend to re-enforce that perception. However the believers need to climb down from their lofty perches, and the skeptics should stop obsessively dismissing peer reviewed science as left wing politics then, maybe, we can discuss the climate and not the trimmings.
I think this rather sums up how most of us feel. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yKUPUznJZoE
Agreed… amazingly many skeptical comments are self-parodies of Gen. Jack Ripper’s rant::
:)
That’s ‘POE’ Jack.
Some also like to say that it has been a communist plot from the beginning of the modern age of climate science. One of our highly-trained broadcast weathermen very recently said this:
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/talk-show-host-karl-marx-created-climate-change-destroy-capitalism
“Incidentally, anyone who really thinks Obama is a left wing politician has probably never travelled outside the US and does not really understand politics.” Well, I’ve been, often for long periods, to over 30 countries in five continents, and have advised prime ministers and state premiers of the left and right. But perhaps I’ve learned nothing.
“anyone who really thinks Obama is a left wing politician has probably never travelled outside the US”
Yes, the rest of the world – particularly the EU – is considerably more totalitarian than the US, and hence on average more leftwing.
Eroica
Agree that the EU is “considerably more totalitarian than the US” (but the US has to be wary of this trend).
That (top-down big government leaning toward totalitarianism) is the main reason that Switzerland (where I live) has rejected EU membership by popular vote and why many regions of all the EU nations, which border on Switzerland, have shown in popular polls that they would prefer becoming part of Switzerland, which has a bottoms-up federalistic system, rather than staying tied to the nations, in which they now live – where they feel they “have nothing to say”.
Max
Yes Switzerland’s bottom-up federalism is a beacon for democracy everywhere – the exact opposite of the centralizsing EU. And also the opposite of increasing centralizing from State to Federal level in the US.
“bottoms-up” / “bottom-up”
Freudian slip on my part(?)
Depending on the canton, if you don’t mind paying huge tax rates and fees and regulation payments then Swipe-your-tax-land is the place for you.
Yes that’s the beauty. Those who want high taxes can live in high-tax cantons, those who want low taxes in low tax ones.
Unlike in a centralized system where everyone is forced to have the same regime. Which typically is what enables the welfare state, where some impose high taxes on others so as to rob them.
At 2:40 AM on 26 May, Eroica had commented:
I would ask of manacker and others with proximal experience of life in the cantons of the Confederacy to confirm this, but it is my understanding that neither the cantonal nor the federal governments in Switzerland can raise revenue (impose increases in taxation, etc.) or make new expenditures beyond what might be termed “petty cash” levels without first putting the decision to a public referendum for an up-or-down vote.
Because the Swiss tend reliably to set such balloting on Sundays rather than on working days of the week (our habit of using Tuesdays in these United States, for example), voter participation trends higher than in our republic.
Here in America – except in those jurisdictions where recall by petition is a clumsy but available mechanism for the public expression of disapprobation for an incumbent elected government thug – once a cadre of popularity-contest winners have installed themselves in legislative or executive positions, they have a set term during which removing them from the power to pillage and graft requires their discovery in bed with the canonical “dead girl or live Boy Scout.”
They tax and spend pretty much as they damn’ well please, and it pleases them very much to blow through the private citizen’s sweat and blood in ways that make drunken sailors seem more responsible than investment bankers.
Hrm. Let’s try to think of another analogy there, okay?
So when we’re lauding “Switzerland’s bottom-up federalism,” it must be remembered that what they do from the “bottom-up” is to deny elected or appointed government employees the unchecked power of the public purse.
Consider such binding referenda taking place in American polities to consider spending and taxing perhaps once or twice each month, not just every two or four or six years, and speculate please upon such frequent public vetting of the decisions made of our decidedly un-representative “representatives” in City Hall, in the statehouse, and in that pit of predatory reptiles on Capitol Hill.
“But I believe that when the house is burning, offense is a very small price to pay for saving the family. And especially after learning from scientists at AGU that my worst fears are not only confirmed, but exceeded, I will bear any charge against me to prompt action.” ~Greg Craven (having a Hal Lewis moment)
Heh. Anything “learned” “from scientists at AGU” is going to be as valuable and nutritious as a meal from a septic tank. Bon appetit to Greg!
Dear Judith,
I appreciate your fine website and your diligent work. I will refrain from commenting on this particular post of yours other than to note that Suzanne Goldenberg’s “reporting” on ICCC-7 was no more objective nor accurate than what DeSmog Blog would have “reported.”
Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, and I do not begrudge people for having opinions or sharing them. In this case, however, I encourage you not to base your opinions regarding the tone, substance, and mood of ICCC-7 on the agenda-driven “reporting” of Suzanne Goldenberg in The Guardian. Please contact Anthony Watts, Stanley Goldenberg, Bill Gray, Joe Bastardi, or any of the other speakers/attendees if you are inclined to believe Suzanne Goldenberg’s assertion that desperation and despair dominated the conference. I am confident that nearly everybody else who attended will tell quite a different story.
Best,
– James
So, you’re saying that people like Watts, Gray and Bastardi are bouyed by all of the politically-driven politics employed by Western governments who are desperate to legitimize sticking a knife into the juggular of commerce to siphon off the blood of the productive by saying scientists made me do it?
?? Konfuzed, Wag. Buoyed by the conference and its participants. Opposing said knife-stickers.
I am listening to this guy James Taylor on a right-wing radio talk show right now. He really likes to lie and misinform.
Yeah, James is great! Your disapproval is high praise and commendation.
Wow. Gaurdian and Desmogblog? Is Dr. Curry that naive? Wow..
INteresting because after thinking about it a while, that’s my take as well.I just don’t think she realized.
Using “The Guardian” as a source and not knowing this source is fanatically CAGW MSM, JC. ??? I didn’t think you were naive to MSM politics of CAGW alarmism (much less Desmogblog) !!!
Yes, Judith. Stop digging; you’re at the bottom of the barrel. Those hand pains are your fingernails breaking.
Dr. Curry, are you quite certain that the person styling themselves “Tucci78” is equipped with the inhibition necessary to divide modeling violence from inflicting actual harm?
Do you think it possible that by giving a person harboring thoughts of violence a public arena, you may be encouraging them along a continuum leading to deeds as opposed to words?
Is there a risk that other persons even more deranged than “Tucci78” might find the discussion on your site to be an indication of the acceptable boundaries of behavior?
For my part I think if we were able to turn the clock back ten years and read what’s being written on your site we’d be appalled and frightened, justifiably. The old trope about boiling frogs may be wrong but nonetheless we find ourselves today in a place where detailed descriptions of violence inflicted on scientific researchers barely elicit a yawn.
Consider however that just because we’ve become accustomed to shocking speech does not mean all words are empty of real intent and significance; arguably there’s a statistical probability that some threats will come to fruition. It would be better to be able look back and see that one was driving odds in the right direction, possibly by refusing to publish and hence tacitly encourage threatening language.
Doug, thank you for this outstanding post. The Climate Etc. forum should not be abandoned to the rude, the abusive, and the violent.
Tucci78 hasn’t threatened anyone with violence. You are trying to limit free speech because you don’t like what is being said. It is more than OK for someone to feel strongly about an issue and express that. Again, you are simply attempting to shut down the opposition to your own agenda.
Jim2, your post amounts to a dismissive “we might get our hair a little mussed” … which we shouldn’t mind.
And yet, common-sense and every-day experience with nutjobs both tell us that Doug Bostrom has the right of it in saying:
Well, AFOMD – you have gotten to me. I have finally come to my senses. Thank You!
After an exhaustive search of the WWW, I finally found a credible threat against a climate scientist. I just hope the FBI is taking this seriously!
“Messrs. Jones and Santer were Ph.D. students of Mr. Wigley. Mr. Santer is the same fellow who, in an email to Phil Jones on Oct. 9, 2009, wrote that he was “very tempted” to “beat the crap” out of me at a scientific meeting. He was angry that I published “The Dog Ate Global Warming” in National Review, about CRU’s claim that it had lost primary warming data.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704398304574598230426037244.html
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s3507732.htm
“You will be chased down the street with burning stakes and hung from your f*** neck, until you are dead, dead, dead!
Die you lying bastard!
F*** off you lying communist c—!!
Eat S*** and Die!!!
— The Canberra Times, 4th June, 2011”
Louise, Why do you again say stuff like lthis?
Consider:
The terrified camper cowers in her tent, the death-screams of her fellow camper and the popping and cracking of his bones still ringing in her ears, as the killer tucks into the dismembered body of her comrade with a grunting smacking gusto and new, obscene, liquid horrors assail her ears. And, then, she hears the grizzly’s sniffing, snorting inquiries at the fabric of her tent just inches away and she wills her terrified body into a petrified stillness. But for naught, as her mind, exploding with panic, records the slavering jaws bursting into her tent….
A whoosh, a strike, and the furry bunny is lifted up on her last agonizing journey, grasped by the talons and borne on the wings of her raptor assailant, that will end with ravenous, newly-hatched hawks tearing at her still living flesh. And, that evening, in the field where a good mother bunny once faithfully tended to her arduous maternal duties, there are heard the tiny cries of her babies, desperate with hunger and fear and longing for their mommy who will never return….
Michael Mann: “The forces of climate change denial have, I believe, awakened a sleeping bear.”
David Roberts in Grist: “A climate hawk leans forward, wants to attack on as many fronts as possible.”
I FEEL THREATENED!!!!!!!!!!
Louise | May 26, 2012 at 11:40 am | Reply
So, according to your link there was ONE AMBIGUOUS email? That’s not exactly Earth shattering, now is it?
jim2 | May 25, 2012 at 6:35 pm | Reply
You’ve found some strong language there, but I don’t see any death threats. You lefties – if you can’t produce evidence, you just make up baseless accusations.
You actually think “You will be chased down the street with burning stakes and hung from your f*** neck, until you are dead, dead, dead!” is not a death threat?
Wow
Louise,
The comment you quoted, while crude, menacing and offensive in character, is no more a death threat than warning someone that they face eternal damnation in the fires of hell, if they don’t mend their ways. Indeed, the comment you quoted is actually far less shocking and threatening than the 10:10 film clip featuring children and others, with an insufficient zeal for the CAGW scam’s orthodoxy, exploded into blood-splatter for their slacker attitudes. Especially since that film was worked up and promoted by leading figures in the greenshirt establishment.
Louise, you’ve identified yourself as a psychologist previously, as I recall. And given your profession, your play with emotionally loaded, even incendiary, images and labels, seems to me best understood as a professional’s purposeful use of psy-ops techniques with the intention to demonize, marginalize, and silence “inconvenient truths” for cheap-shot agit-prop advantage. Could be wrong, but you seem way too much the self-aware, little-operator smarty-pants to actually believe the inflammatory crapola you often peddle on this blog.
Extremely disappointed that you base your whole post on two articles by Suzanne Goldberg. This has done your reputation as a careful reviewer of information a big disservice. Whatever your politics or your views on Heartland, taking Ms Goldberg at her word shows very poor judgement and it would only have taken a short search on her record to realize this.
Dr. Curry,
As an occasional “snooper” I am absolutely flabbergasted at the lack of “scientific” due dilligence exhibited in this particular post. Being charitable I can only presume that it was late at night after a long day in the “lab”.
As an occasional “snooper” I am absolutely flabbergasted…hay that’s science.
I am sure you will agree that it would be a big disservice to maintaining the integrity of science to take Michael Mann at his word.
Seems to that when Leftists acknowledge that it should be universally accepted that the Guardian should have zero credibility then perhaps we perhaps are getting close to a consensus of opinion acknowledging that global warming is nothing more than a hoax and a scart tactic.
NEWSFLASH: Leftists disavow the Guardian and the ‘hockey stick’ describing both as the works of fanatics.
Lol, Goldenberg? Judith, you should know by now to source and vet the information people put out. DeSmear? If the alarmists need to have these people to make their arguments, then HI is clearly winning the discussion.
HI has never been, nor is it today, an institute primarily focused on climate, they’re a libertarian think tank and they’ve rightly seen through the facade of climate alarmism. It never was a discussion of science. The faux science was a ruse to usurp power and money. The comparison to Kyzenski is apt.
The discussion needs to move from the never ending circular debate of statistical trivialities to discuss the effects and aims of the alarmists’ advocacy. They’re doing much harm to our societies and people.
The basics of a modern day liberal education:
• Witch Burning 101: Techniques in Finding and Eliminating AGW Deniers
• Disestablishment Capitalism 101: Techniques of Finding and Eliminating Capitalists
• Situation Ethics 101: Techniques of Finding and Eliminating Judeo-Christian Ethics
• Political Correctness 101: New Methods for Constructing Towers of Babel
• Secular Socialism 101: Techniques for Increasing Personal Dependence on the State
• Global Warming 101: Using Superstition and Ignorance to Increase State Revenue
Dr. Curry, really, using Suzanne Goldberg as a source for anything is no better than using Baron von Munchausen as a source.
Would you accept the word of Michael Mann on the “Hockey Stick” without checking it yourself (if you could get the complete data)? Please, you can’t be this naive.
… did you mean …Goldenberg?
Wow it seems most of the posts here disagree soundly with Dr Curry’s proposition about Heartlands future. Apparently Mr Bast has confirmed that the statements here are nearly all false or presumptious. Unfortunately it is becoming blatantly clear by now that there is no warming and that it is ridiculous to even suggest that skeptics are losing. They have in fact, already won and this will be cemented in the next two years as temperatures continue flat or fall further, sea ice increases stays normal etc etc. All Climate Scientist who pushed the AGW theory will by then look incredible stupid and will have to change careers. Please have a look at UAH satellite temps even RSS trends last 30 years will do for God’s sake. How can you possibly even practice “Modelers Climate Science” ask Freeman Dyson
Any real scientist wiht a reputation to protect headed for the UN exits by 2009 so what we’re left with now are the government ‘experts.’
“Unfortunately it is becoming blatantly clear by now that there is no warming”
wrong:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/plot/gistemp/plot/uah
Recently I quoted the Royal Society, The National Academy of Sciences and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. We can be clear that climate is a complex non-linear system – regardless of the inability of AGW space cadets to comprehend the new climate paradigm. Recent warming is at most 0.1 degrees C/decade, there were obviously other causes and the planet has entered a new cooling phase for another decade or three.
I think it a symptom of a leftist physcho-pathology. Limits to growth as rationale for political control of societies and economics. Are they sincere and well meaning? It matters not at all. As Hayek said – from ‘the saintly and single-minded idealist to the fanatic is often but a step.’
There is in fact no meaningful limit to human economies and societies because we are creatures who determine our own future through creativity and innovation. It is more than evident for instance that energy sources in 2050 will be much different than those of today.
In the meantime there is no overweening threat to either ecologies or societies and the conservation of democracy, free markets, free peoples – the wealth of our enlightenment heritage is the critical struggle of this and every other day it seems. Humanity desperately needs more of our western strenghts not less – more democracy and economic growth not less – more free markets and free and strong peoples not less.
The rest of humanity which of course is most of humanity–i.e., those who live in Brazil, Russia, India, and China and in the developing and Third world countries–they do not share these fears and delusions. And all who do in the West are Western Leftists.
I Am Afraid We Fear Too Much http://wp.me/p27eOk-o4
Heartland is utterly unimportant. But the hundreds of thousand individuals all over the net who are aware of now that something is stinking in Climate Science and who do have the education to check propositions said to be “scientific” on which preposterously ineffective and expensive policies are based, are not.
The only thing we need now is to keep up the political pressure, that everything with possible political implications in science be put into the public domain immediately, including scientific publications, datasets with all their metadata available, source code and full documentation of computational models, everything, online, in easily accessible format.
No more paywalls, no more proprietary datasets or code. All references to such material, either direct or indirect, should be ruthlessly scrubbed from political reports like IPCC publications once and for all.
No branch of science like Homeopathy, Ufology, Torah Code Research, Phrenology, Reflexology, Eugenics, Astrology, Psychoanalysis, Iridology, Graphology, Alchemy, Lysenkoism, Metoposcopy, Physiognomy or Creation Science was ever identified as pseudoscience from the inside. I mean all these disciplines have (or used to have) their own infrastructure, complete with conferences, peer reviewed journals, grants, researchers, even with University departments in some cases, still, it is all crap.
Experts in these branches of research are inherently unreliable if it comes to judge the overall scientific quality of their respective field of expertise. In each and every case it was outsiders from neighboring disciplines who were able to deliver a devastating verdict.
Unfortunately Computational cAGW Theory has brought the same dark shadow of the pseudo prefix over Climate Science as such. At this stage there is no way whatsoever to cleanse it from the inside any more. All its so called experts got tainted by being unable to do the job on their own, so clearly, an army of educated outsiders has to get involved.
The list includes physicists, statisticians, geologists, chemists, meteorologists, astrophysicists, mathematicians, computer scientists and such. But this endeavor can only be effective if all material Climate Science has produced so far is immediately accessible to all at no additional cost. For these people have their own field of interest and have no patience to enforce FOIA requests or equivalent while doing a service.
A full scale audit of Climate Science performed by independent researchers is inevitable at this stage to restore its status among other serious scientific disciplines. And when I say independent I mean it, for almost all official scientific bodies (Academies, Societies, etc.), made fool of themselves by openly supporting, even whitewashing agenda based pseudoscience in this field.
Finally I have to say this: if the job does not get done as soon as practicable, all natural sciences will suffer miserably under the backlash.
There may be a kinship between the Global Warming and the Frontal Lobotomy Sciences as well.
Berényi Péter, it will please you to know that James Hansen has publically committed to precisely your goals.
Hansen’s recent work is scrupulously made publicly available, free-as-in-freedom, now and forever, and is archived permanently and unchangeably. Good!
Moreover, note that of Hansen’s eighteen co-authors in his most recent article “Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature” (2012), the majority of coauthors *not* climate scientists, but rather are professionals from the disciplines of law, biology, theology, medicine, etc.
If we assume that Hansen’s predictions of an acceleration of sea-level rise are confirmed in coming years, then the steps that Hansen is taking now, to ensure transparency, accountability, and broad-based analysis, will greatly assist Hansen’s long-term objective of reducing the prevalence of climate change skepticism … with that triumph of climate science achieved by means that are scrupulously rational, ethical, and transparent.
We can *all* applaud *that*, eh?
Hansen’s tool of choice seems to be ice pick, eh?
We could, of course, if this openness were general & genuine. Let me not talk about the Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature (2012), which is clearly not science but a political pamphlet. Let’s consider Earth’s Energy Imbalance and Implications (as yet unpublished) instead, a review paper, kind of.
It includes 114 references. Could you tell me how much of it is in the public domain?
Where can one find the datasets those studies are based on?
Openness is a-comin`, Berényi! :)
As it turns out, the main obstruction to openness is not the scientists, and not the politicians, but rather the large publishing companies (Elsevier, Springer, etc) who presently control most scientific article copyrights.
A rebellion is underway, led mainly by mathematicians, and by posting his articles on the arXiv server, James Hansen (and many other mathematicians, scientists, and engineers) are serving as soldier in the rebellion. They’re joining because they appreciate that good science benefits from openness.
Also, and oddly enough, one of the first politicians to publicly support the openness revolution was a Veep named … Al Gore! :)
“Hansen’s recent work is scrupulously made publicly available, free-as-in-freedom, now and forever, and is archived permanently and unchangeably.”…. at least until the next correction needs to be applied.
Ms. Curry,
With respect to your respect for the Guardian, may I beg to differ. The Manchester Guardian of yore was a fine, fine newspaper. I learnt many words reading the back of it whilst my father read it at breakfast.
What it has become under recent editorships is appalling and saddening. Let me sum up what the paper is like. You may or may not be aware of it “Comment Is Free” section, which has blogs on many matters. Now and again – once, not that long ago – you get an article on CAGW. Now, should you not toe the party line, it is likely that your comment be deleted, and even, your posting rights removed. Komment Macht Frei, as it is called. Toe the party line or be silenced.
As for Goldenberg, she is a serial offender in the misinformation (shall we say – it is a Guardian speciality) stakes. You sully what you write by quoting the Guardian – it’s attitude to AGW is borderline hysterical. And I mean that.
I leave you to make what you like of that. I know what I think about it.
What you’re saying then is that just because the Guardian and Goldenberg are notorious prevaricators Heartland should not hold that against a Leftist like Koczynsky.
That would seem to be what YOU are saying. I don’t see that in what I wrote at all. You are projecting.
You used a couple of different ways to label Goldenberg and the Guardian as total liars. Rather than draw inferences from the fact that both are Leftist and both are promoters of hysterical AGW you decided that the real issue is that those that fight against AGW fearmongering would even report what they’re saying, right?
David Wojick | May 25, 2012 at 2:37 pm | Reply
This is interesting:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/25/joe-bast-responds-to-dr-judith-currys-post-on-heartland/
=================================
Judith,
Your quoting of the Guardian has prompted many negative comments about HI. Do you plan to acknowledge Joe Bast’s reponse to this post?
Judith
Even I get deleted from the Guardian comments page for daring to post historic information that puts cagw in context. The various trolls there regularly ‘report abuse’ of anything they disagree with- which is ANYTHING that disputes CAGW- and the post disappears.
Its not a serious or credible newspaper any longer and the reporter you cited is not renowned for accuracy. I think it was a mistake not to provide better balance, not that I’ve got any brief for Heartland.
tonyb
This is true, as a believer in climate change it does grieve me to see the Guardian censor any stance which which calls aspects of the accepted theory into doubt. The Guardian really should be ashamed of themselves.
The Guardian is not fit for fish and chips.
I think y’all are giving Dr. Curry a bit more of hard time than necessary. Media games are a learning experience. Highlighting the stance of the Guardian is not much different that highlighting the Dragon Slayers. She tends to be an equal opportunity offender which makes her pretty much middle of the road :)
She will probably follow this post up with another psycho analytic paper.
Good. I like those. :)
Wouldn’t the critique of Heartland be a psychoanalytic paper? :)
+1
There is plenty of job security in that field :0
Folks, there’s a mathematical result, called the Minimax Theoreom that says in any game of strategy … include games like poker that have an element of chance … there exists an optimal strategy that is game-winning even if your opponent knows you’re playing it.
It’s entirely clear that James Hansen and his climatological colleagues have conceived a Minimax Strategy and are scrupulously implementing it.
And that is the real source of “Heartburn at Heartland.” The Heartland directors, and their corporate sponsors, are beginning to appreciate — and are made increasingly desperate by it — that if Hansen’s predictions of accelerating climate change are verified in coming years, then climate change skepticism will be marginalized to the point of non-viability.
Which is as it should be … because after all, “Mother Nature cannot be fooled.”
Having recently quoted the Royal Society, the National Academy of Sciences and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute on the ‘new paradigm’ of abrupt climate change – could be you and Hansen have already been marginalised and simply don’t realise it yet.
Cap’n: A FAN of MORE Discorse is the nortorious A Physicist or more recently Bernie. I’d recognize the Hanson man love anywhere.
Finally… It is true! And, I am glad to hear it coming from the Left. Nature will have the last say.
Global Warming Vaporware and the Perpetual Motion Machine http://wp.me/p27eOk-nL
“that if Hansen’s predictions of accelerating climate change are verified in coming years, then climate change skepticism will be marginalized to the point of non-viability.”
If the world continues warming in the next 5 years and doesn’t begin the cooling trend that so many skeptics expect from their cycles and solar activities then indeed it will become very much marginalized. If we see 0.2C warming this decade it’ll be nigh impossible for skeptics to claim it’s natural cycles or the Sun given they expected cooling from those factors.
Arctic sea ice is another one. If we get a minimum lower than 2007 then all the skeptic claims that arctic sea ice reached lows in 2007 and is recovering will collapse.
The focus of Leftist fearmongering seems to have transmogrified from the plight of polar bears to coastal inhabitants.
And they still haven’t explained why the sea level had a positive inflection beginning 1850. (H/T to Bart!)
“If we get a minimum lower than 2007 then all the skeptic claims that arctic sea ice reached lows in 2007 and is recovering will collapse.”
If that happened it would force me to reconsider my opinion of current IPCC climate science.
Until then, my opinion of IPCC climate science is: It’s corrupt.
But wait. IF the arctic sea ice collapsed AND that would agree with the models I would still say that that was just a lucky stroke; as climate is chaotic and an imperfect model with finite resolution of a chaotic system MUST diverge exponentially from the reality of the chaotic system over time – so if they guessed the average temperature for a moment 20 years in the future just right even without Hansen’s GISS tampering, then that would still just be a lucky guess.
(Why does the deviation of the state of the model from reality grow exponentially over time? Because it’s a chaotic system that you simulate. THAT IS THE DEFINITION OF CHAOS. Not a friendly suggestion.)
The smarter ones of the modelers probably know this definition but they keep quiet.
They wanna be able to keep pretending that they’re doing something meaningful for their lavish funding.
The models can capture the correct forcing dynamics without getting the nonlinear chaotic elements (which can’t be modeled, ever) correct, and still therefore be useful. Maps are never the territory, but they can still be useful and tell you the general direction you are headed.
What is this, metaphorical physics? What is this general direction? Up or down? It sounds like you are saying that if we ignore the unpredictability we can make a prediction. The IPCC would agree, but this is not science.
I think what R Gates is saying is that the models are still useful even if they are giving us the big picture. It’s not a case of ignoring uncertainty it’s working with all you’ve got.
If the question was what a 5% increase in solar output would do to the Earth we’d have to go to the models to calculate it. Even a back of the envelope calculation would be a crude model that is useful.
Someone could come along and appeal to the unpredictable chaos in climate in order to argue that a 5% increase in solar output would in fact cool the Earth. Of course that *could* be true. The models aren’t proof after-all. There could be some wacky rube goldberg like machine operating within the chaos of climate which would actually make the planet cool in response to a 5% increase in solar output.
But it’s not very convincing is it? The evidence provided by the models is more convincing, and so this is where people’s views will shift. Oh none of them will say for sure we know exactly what will happen, but they will consider certain things much more likely than others based on the supplied evidence.
The really funny bit is that the models are themselves chaotic.
‘AOS models are members of the broader class of deterministic chaotic dynamical systems, which provides several expectations about their properties (Fig. 1). In the context of weather prediction, the generic property of sensitive dependence is well understood (4, 5). For a particular model, small differences in initial state (indistinguishable within the sampling uncertainty for atmospheric measurements) amplify with time at an exponential rate until saturating at a magnitude comparable to the range of intrinsic variability. Model differences are another source of sensitive dependence. Thus, a deterministic weather forecast cannot be accurate after a period of a few weeks, and the time interval for skillful modern forecasts is only somewhat shorter than the estimate for this theoretical limit. In the context of equilibrium climate dynamics, there is another generic property that is also relevant for AOS, namely structural instability (6). Small changes in model formulation, either its equation set or parameter values, induce significant differences in the long-time distribution functions for the dependent variables (i.e., the phase-space attractor).’ http://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709.full
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=sensitivedependence.gif
“If the world continues warming in the next 5 years and doesn’t begin the cooling trend that so many skeptics expect from their cycles and solar activities then indeed it will become very much marginalized. If we see 0.2C warming this decade it’ll be nigh impossible for skeptics to claim it’s natural cycles or the Sun given they expected cooling from those factors.”
Satellite:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/
Some would claim you need more than 5 years. If you saying in 5 years there is a trend, what is the trend for last 5 years or 10 years?
If look at graph over last 30 years, the trend has been less than .2 C per decade and there has been yearly swings greater than .2 C. In last 10 years there has been .2 C swings cooler and warmer. If either are repeated in next 5 years how does it prove anything- other than continuation of a basically flat trend? It just makes a stronger trend of it being flat.
It seems to me if you looking at only 5 years, one needs temperatures exceeding the 1998 temperature peak level and holding this level for 4 years or more of the 5 years. It would not prove much but it certainly would give one more hope, as it continued at this new level. Such temperatures are not making case for CAGW but making a case for AGW- humans are having some effect.
But if basically continue what it’s been doing for last 10 year for next 5 years the result would a lower longer range trend of not warming. So if bounces up or down like already has, if a down is first years, it does not give proof a cooling trend- though gives one “some hope”, but there is not a trend of cooling, if continues downward for another 5 years, then it strengthen your case, it’s recession, rather a great recession or depression.
Said differently it seems very unlikely any kind movement in temperature over the next 5 year is going add much to the past 10 years of temperature- unless it’s dramatic warming or cooling.
For news purposes such temperature in next 5 years, could a be story, but unless unusual [greater than .2 C] in terms of science it not conclusive.
The point you seem to be missing is the upward 1998 increase in temperature was suppose the beginning of ever rising temperatures, not the immediate decrease from the peak and failure to have one year blimp become the trend.
And we have the same thing with 2007 arctic sea ice, heralded to be the beginning of trend, but to make another 2007 low 10 years after 2007 [when some scientist were claiming there an ice free arctic within 5 year [by 2012] is far less significant].
If within one decade we reach the point in global temperature where the 1998 global temperatures peak and the 2007 is polar ice peak is the new baseline of a more less flat trend, this is not CAGW.
Rather does indicate continued warming tread of last two centuries THOUGH perhaps also some evidence that humans are having small effect upon the global climate.
At such a point, we might see these so called human fingerprints upon global temperature. It should noted if this were to happen, it does not mean some scientific study in 1980 indicating human prints upon global temperature was “proven correct”- because this future data would not be the data available in 1980.
I don’t think it’s likely such warming will occur, and therefore that such evidence of these human prints of global temperature will be found.
I also don’t think it’s likely we will have long trend of low sunspot/low solar activity.
We have had a significant drop in solar activity.
And seems unlikely we will regain the higher levels of solar activity we had in 20th century within say the next 5 to 10 year. But these are guesses- any prediction of the sun is like predicting next year farming season- perhaps a vast improvement as compared to what a better than average shaman could predict. Wiki:
Predictions
“NASA predicts that solar cycle 24 will peak in early or mid 2013 with about 59 sunspots. This would make it the least active cycle in the past one hundred years. The International Space Environment Service predicts the cycle to peak at 90 sunspots in May 2013”
There was a spike upwards in 1998 due to that giant El Nino, but that spike itself has not affected the longterm trend. The 1980-2000 rate of warming is almost identical to the 1980-present rate:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1980/to:2000/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1980/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1980/trend
There’s no clear sign here that warming has stopped or even slowed down since 2000.
Of course the argument that it has stopped or slowed down is from calculating a trend since eg 2001 which produces cooling:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1980/to:2000/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1980/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1980/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/trend
But the thing people miss when they start trends in 2001 or such like is that they’ve picked a starting point which is miles above the longterm trend line. Not purposely, but when they went looking for a cooling trend it was inevitable one would most likely occur starting from a point well above the longterm trend.
For people who argue that the cooling trend since 2001 defies CAGW, I would ask them to consider what would be the consequences if the period 2001 to 2012 had a 0.2C warming trend instead. In that case the 1980-present trend would be a lot higher than the 1980-2000 trend, which would indicate an acceleration in global warming.
So what we’ve not had is an acceleration*. Instead we’ve “just” had a continuation of the same rate of warming seen 1980-2000, which is of course compatible with CAGW. The various “CAGW” considered projections show a linear increase in warming, rather than an acceleration.
This is also evident from the satellite records.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1980/to:2000/trend/plot/uah/from:1980/plot/uah/from:1980/trend/plot/uah/from:2001/trend
*there is one way the data would be compatible with acceleration: if a quiet Sun and “cooling cycles” since 2000 have caused a big cooling effect as many skeptics claim then it implies the warming has been much greater in order to counter-act it.
lolwot, the fun part is in the predicting. The stratosphere cooling trend shifted in 1995, that is the first indication of a climate shift which Tsonis and Douglas estimate stated in 1998 with the Super El Nino. Thermal lag of the oceans would prevent a rapid shift in surface temperature.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/UAHoceansStratosphere1979to2002and2002to2011.png
Pretty obvious shift.
The oceans would be the thing to follow to anticipate the surface temperature change. ARGO seems to agree with a change in ocean heat uptake. The sea level trend seems to agree with a change in ocean heat uptake. The southern hemisphere temperatures seem to agree with a shift to a neutral trend.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/UAHMSUSHfrom1996.png
With the shift starting before the solar minimum, the probability of a true cooling trend is greatly improved. If the solar minimum is as deep and as long as predicted, the ocean energy imbalance will shift to negative by about 0.5Wm-2. That is about twice what is expected since the southern hemisphere and the tropics will be more greatly impacted during the stronger portion of the orbital cycle.
Tsonis and Swanson’s temperature record corrected for climate shifts IMO makes an even stronger case for CAGW:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/Temp_minus_variability.gif
As their caption reads: “Figure 2: Observed GISS 21-year running mean global mean surface temperature (heavy solid) along with that temperature cleaned of the internal signal (dashed). The cleaned global mean temperature warms monotonically, and closely resembles a quadratic fit to the observed 20th century global mean temperature (thin solid)”
lolwot,
Where is your sense of adventure?
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/australiameantemperaturewithoverlayofSHreconstruction.png
There have been a few fairly radical climate changes in the recent past. It takes a little time to recover from a century or three of below normal, so with that recovery and a few extra billion folks, it is amplified, but you can’t tell how much it is amplified until you know what normal should be. Now looks pretty normal compared to the 1300s :) The stratosphere shifts tends to indicate that the oceans think things are about normal. The general trend in reduced estimates of TCR seems to indicate that the oceans think things are about normal.
Most importantly though, no one has ever correctly predicted climate beyond 30 years, because of natural cycles.
lolwot
Yeah.
But the trend from 1980 to 1998 (warming at around 0.15 degC per decade) is decidedly different from the trend from 1998 to today (slight cooling of around 0.02 degC per decade).
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1980/to:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1980/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/trend
The shift is even more pronounced if the cut date is end 2000 (the date, when most observers have noted a shift from warming to “unexplained” cooling), rather than end 1997.
Lolwot, the fact remains that there was a change in the (~30-year) cyclical warming trend of the late 20th century to the 11+-year period since end 2000. Whether this is the beginning of another multi-decadal cycle of slight cooling (as Girma has projected) remains to be seen. But to deny it by showing linear rates for other periods does not make much sense.
Max
Manacker: “But the trend from 1980 to 1998 (warming at around 0.15 degC per decade) is decidedly different from the trend from 1998 to today (slight cooling of around 0.02 degC per decade).
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1980/to:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1980/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/trend
But look your blue trend line starts FAR above the end of the red trendline. The 1980-1998 red trendline ends at about +0.2C anomaly but your blue trend line after that starts at about +0.4C anomaly. Basically your method has hidden 0.2C warming since 1998.
The question is whether the 1980-1998 warming rate has continued past 1998. To assess that we should simply extrapolate the 1980-1998 trendline and see if recent data match.
Not only does it match but HadCRUT3 even makes a slight case for the warming accelerating since 1998:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1980/to:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1980/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1980/trend
If there really had been cooling or a slowdown in warming after 1998 the 1980-present trend line should be more shallow than the trend 1980-1998.
Translation : if the current 15-year lack of global warming continues for another 5 years, CO2 alarmism will start collapsing.
Except there has been no lack of global warming over the past 15 years. This meme seems as insidious as a cancer!
Already of course sea levels have defied skeptics by continuing to rise
http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/en/news/ocean-indicators/mean-sea-level/
Claims that it stopped rising in 2006 turned out to be false, and similarly recent claims that it had stopped rising in 2010 turned out to be false. I wonder if skeptics will try appealing to the next time sea level rise temporarily slows down. Of course the difference next time is that my counter-argument will consist of two previous examples when they were wrong. These short-term trend exploits have one flaw: the more often they turn out wrong the more ammo there is to silence future claims along those lines.
Errors, misinformation, bias and distorted reporting of natural events is the problem today, not receding glaciers and melting icepacks because of human CO2, e.g.,
“It will without doubt have come to your Lordship’s knowledge that a considerable change of climate inexplicable at present to us must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been during the last two years greatly abated… This, with information of a similar nature derived from other sources; the unusual abundance of ice islands that have during the last two summers been brought by currents from Davies Straights into the Atlantic.”
Is the above evidence of GLOBAL WARMING?
Yes, but, this is global warming in 1817 as reported in “a letter from the President of the Royal Society to the British Admiralty,” i.e., nothing to do with AGW whatsoever.
That tells us nothing. There was even more ice before 1817 than there was 30 years ago?
Defining CO2 as a pollutant is the second greatest enviro-whackpot hoax of our time. And, fabricating concerns about human-caused global deglaciation is one of countless doomsday scenarios that the secular Left and its apocalyptic faith-based AGW believers have spun out of whole cloth or simply pulled from their big white hats. “The history of the Earth tells us that the climate is always changing; from warm periods when the dinosaurs flourished, to the many ice ages when glaciers covered much of the land. Climate has always changed due to natural cycles without any help from people.” ~Ken Gregory
Before Experts They Were Just Liars http://wp.me/p27eOk-fi
Well, sea levels recently jumped up dramatically as the whole history of the Envisat data record turned out to be false and had to be rewritten in its entirety.
One week before the satellite died.
Sea level does funny things.
lolwot – see:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/05/24/heartburn-at-heartland/#comment-203172
A fan of *MORE* discourse said:
“Folks, there’s a mathematical result, called the Minimax Theoreom that says in any game of strategy … include games like poker that have an element of chance … there exists an optimal strategy that is game-winning even if your opponent knows you’re playing it.”
“[…] that if Hansen’s predictions of accelerating climate change are verified in coming years, then climate change skepticism will be marginalized to the point of non-viability.”
I see what you mean. Hansen predicted a temperature, and he is in charge of producing that temperature record, so it’ll be no problem for him to make his prediction appear true by falsifying the temperature record even more than he does now.
But there’s one problem with the strategy. When harvests are failing and summer is rainy and cool people will not give a damn about GISS telling them that it’s the hottest year in the history of the planet.
At a certain point the constant lying simply becomes apparent even to the greatest dolt.
Dirkh, your post is factually incorrect with regard to temperature as Hansen’s main predictive card.
Inspecting Hansen’s recent publications, we see that Hansen played his main prediction card in the opening abstract “Earth’s Energy Imbalance and Implications” (arXiv:1105.1140v2), where we read in the unalterably posted version of Thursday, 5 May 2011 (18:43:01 GMT) the passage:
This prediction tightened in version II (Friday, 2 Sep 2011 (20:03:51 GMT)) to read:
Emphasis added.
Now, given Hansen’s long-term goal of triumphing over climate skeptism, we naturally wonder “Why did Hansen name sea-level rise as his prediction trump-card?”
Three natural reasons are: (1) fluctuations in sea-level rise are small compared to atmospheric temperature fluctuations, and (2) sea-level rise is tracked by multiple independent methods by multiple intedpendent teams from multiple independent nations, and most of all (3) during May-September 2011 sea-level was at a transient low, and so Hansen could bet with high confidence that sea-level rise rates *would* rebound.
And you know what? Hansen was entirely right. And if the sea-level rise continues to accelerate in the coming decade, there will be mighty little ground left for rational climate-change skepticism.
Which of course, is Hansen’s fore-sighted strategy. Game, set, match.
And like any Minimax Strategy, Hansen’s climate-change strategy is effective even when his adversaries know that he’s playing it.
“the Minimax Theoreom…says in any game of strategy…include games like poker that have an element of chance…there exists an optimal strategy that is game-winning even if your opponent knows you’re playing it.”
Actually, it doesn’t say there is a “game-winning strategy,” rather it says there is an optimal strategy. Playing your optimal strategy may mean that your expected payoff is way lower than that of your opponent, so there is no sense in saying that the “optimal” strategy is a “winning” one.
In conclusion, you can put that back where you got it. :)
The Guardian is one of Super Mandia and his teams better customers. I wonder if they have any influence in the sort of negative reporting we saw, or if their brief is strictly scientific?
tonyb
tonyb, Off topic, Gergis et al have a new Australian temperature reconstruction. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/05/fresh-hockey-sticks-from-the-southern-hemisphere/#bib_1
Since you are into the long slow thaw, I thought I would compare some real stuff to my playing. So just for grins, I overlaid my southern hemisphere reconstruction using Neukom et al and Cook et al reconstruction for Southern South America and Tasmania.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/australiameantemperaturewithoverlayofSHreconstruction.png
Kinda interesting. I used 11 year smoothing instead of 30 and also converted to approximate Wm-2.
Sort of busts to pieces the “long slow thaw” notion doesn’t it? But numerous other credible studies have as well, however that won’t stop many from holding on to the idea that we are still in a recovery from the LIA. Go figure…
Not completely, the northern hemisphere has a much more dramatic change to forcing and pre-industrial we didn’t have the technology to break ice, remove snow and in general speed recovery from harsh winters. That is a land use impact that seems to be under appreciated.
R Gates
Surely we already discussed this paper at great length on WUWT? Very unimpressive. Extremely sparse data and many of them from lumps of trees. It seems to be entitled ‘Australasian temperature reconstruction September to January.’ Ah! The Antipodean growing season I assume? Do you really think this is impressive as a reconstruction of 1000 years of the whole climate?
Come to that anyway, a 0.6 warming in four centuries- which is the period my study covered. How long and slow is that? Put a trend line from 1650 to today-so use a proper lower axis point covering 400 years and not squeeze it into 1000- and see what you find. Youre right its not long and slow. Its long and glacially slow
tony
Tony,
Sorry for “disappearing”. Too much coffee?!
I’ll need to spend some time reading the WUWT dissection of this paper. Generally though I am convinced that any LIA “recovery” ended between 1850 and 1900 at the very latest, which would include all slower Earth system feedbacks. But I am always open to other perspectives, so I’ll have a look.
R Gates
I sometimes suspect that you go to work and also sleep instead of replyimg to me. Its not good enough.
tonyb
You’re right Tony. My priorities should be:
1) Reply to Tony
2) Earn a living
3) Sleep (if time allows) :)
R gates
There’s only one priority
1. Agree with tony
Tonyb
Judith;
You cite and quote Goldenberg? From the Grauniad? A major ‘own goal’. She makes Romm look like a journalistic straight-shootin’ saint.
As it happens, the kerfuffle has been a major financial boost for HI, probably doubling next year’s expected donations and revenue. Susie G. could hardly be wronger if she tried.
When the rain it keeps on raining,
When predictions keep on failing,
When the temperatures ain’t rising
Tho’ the IPCC’s denying…
The birds they sing
At the break of day,
Start again,
I hear them say,
That’s how the light gets in.
H/T the dreaded Leonard Cohen
Beth Cooper,
Not bad . . . . . not bad at all . . . .
John
Daylight begins at the rooster’s crow; night begins at the nightingale’s rich song; children at play define the daylight hours; night-time foreboding consume those who will not see the stars.
Map the views by Country of any article concerning global warming and guess what? There won’t be a single view from Africa to Asia including all of Russia and throw in Greenland too. The Medium is the Message: It’s just Westerners who are busy piss’n down their own leg on this issue and the productivity loss is huge.
The “nice” people caved when the Commies got upset about the truth about themselves.
Great email from Bast.
Full of self-delusion.
Good to see their ‘climate conference’ giving space to the pressing issues such as Birtherism.
Birtherism? I would have thought you would have reveled in the Illinois Coal Association sponsoring the Heartland. Big bad coal employs a lot of people that have mortgages and seem to be concerned about being able to pay them in the future with the EPA up their butts. Silly people concern about themselves instead of the decreasing probability of significant global warming.
That’s just a no-brainer isn’t it.
When the issue was potential for increased regulation of smoking, the tobacco companies ran to Heartland, now it’s CO2, so it’s the fossil fuel industries that throw mioney at them.
Yawn!
But to try and present it as the disinterested pursuit of science……well, you have to be a hopelessly gullible dope to swallow that nonsense.
It is a snoozer, unscientific agenda driven organizations seeking the assistance of unscientific not for profit advocacy groups. What happen to the good old days when unscientific agenda driven groups used the power of protest and linear no threshold modeling to manufacture a scientific sounding reason for their existence?
Arnold and Michael jay said it was a no-brainer, they were smart too…
http://www.jillstanek.com/2012/05/sad-to-say-michael-j-fox-was-a-tool/
but there is too much money in telling lies today. Brain surgury does not come cheap even the tools are expensive, just ask the state of Cali.
Oh, dear, Miss Judith… I always hoped your blog would be open science; not open slather.
Cordially,
hopelessly gullible dope
A fan of *More* discourse, @ 25/05 5.34pm:
Oh, I do so fear the *dangerousness* of Dangerous Climate Change that threatens Young People and Nature, Joy, that I must needs award it three emoticons. :-( :-( :-(
Tsk tsk Judith, for all your natural inclinations towards objectivity, integrity and ethicality you are still a captive of the leftist academic milieu you inhabit, with its false assumptions about the world. Your naive and enthusiastic financial support of the “New Hope” in 2008 illustrates that. You remind me of a younger version of my academic psychologist Aunt Judith, now retired, who in her case was lucky enough to have a more conservative husband (also an academic) to eventually lead to a modification of her politics. Come on Judith, you are so close to an epiphany, turn away from the dark side and don’t look back.
Congrats on your blog btw, even though many of the (warmist) denizens leave a lot to be desired.
Well, having been off-line or largely off-line for some weeks, I’ve found this thread extremely entertaining. Not necessarily leading to truth, light and wisdom, but, hey, you can’t have everything.
tony b is right, of course.
The Guardian is not a “reliable source of unbiased information on AGW”. Its censorship policy leaves no room for opinions that dissent from the IPCC “mainstream consensus” viewpoint.
One could argue that the Heartland Institute is also not a “reliable source of unbiased information on AGW”.
But I personally found the NIPCC report, which Heartland sponsored, to be as objective (or not so) as the IPCC AR4 report, which it essentially critiqued and rebutted.
This is because the IPCC itself, largely as a result of its “consensus process” is also not a “reliable source of unbiased information on AGW”.
Max
When the facts are in dispute there cannot be an unbiased source of information, because what is or is not information is part of the disagreement. The closest one can come is a source that presents both sides.
But I object to the term bias being applied to anyone who has a position in a controversy. Bias is a flaw, but strong belief is not necessarily wrong.
“both sides” is a bias that tends to equate very unequal parts as 2 equal and opposite ‘sides’.
Logic does not measure parts. How do you? The number of people you like?
Or we could do it by voting, in which case you are losing.
Michael on MSM.
Further to yr ‘Threats to Nature and Young People’ comment,
fan of *More* discourse:
The Wasteland, TS Eliot:
April, cruel month!
Zerstort. Shantih.
And May’s no picnic.
Another emoticon :-) and H/T to David Bader.
Just followed a link and found myself here. Who’s Judith Curry? Anyone who would like to donate to Heartland can do so by going here:
https://giving.heartland.org/donate
It would probably be polite to redact the email addresses from Bast’s email.
It’s on the heartland website, click on About:
Phone:
312-377-4000
Email:
jbast@heartland.org
http://heartland.org/joseph-bast
They are public persons- they want their email published.
If you want to tattoo it to our forehead they might pay you:)
done
JC, you should be ashamed of your celebrating Heartland’s demise for one really stupid act, for which they are strangely unrepentent. I eagerly await your such death dance for Pacific Institue or other AGW prostitues.
If that was a celebration, it was a very muted one.
This is going to be a celebration, Michael…
Rev 10:7 But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.
you will not be able to deny the day when it comes either. This will be the One, to remember.
“demise”?
Don’t worry the heartland institute isn’t going into demise. It’ll be around for a very long time to act as a figurehead for skeptics all over the world and inevitably embarrass them once more. I eagerly await their next blunder.
We will beat this first.
http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/229653-house-to-examine-plan-to-let-un-regulate-internet
Look at who you are with, second. We get it, do you?
So Bast’s position is that the billboard created a buzz about climate change. I don’t think the buzz is a big one but for vested interests on both sides the need for more buzz is plain enough. Climate change simply isn’t much of a concern in the U.S. anymore. Gay marriage upstaged it fercrisakes. The imminent destruction of civilization by choking in its own pollutants is of less concern than the prospect of same sex marriage. That’s friggin’ hilarious. Here’s a clue for all of you. It’s the economy, stupid.
Well … it appears the widely publicized demise of Heartland was premature, as Joe Bast demonstrates.
Heartland will survive as long as there are companies who feel the need to fight environmental regulations. This is Heartlands core business and is well demonstrated by their rather sorry history of being on the wrong side of both science and the interests of public health and the environment.
I’m for Heartland, too, and I’m not a company; just a concerned citizen.
We ran out of real environmental clean up needs in the US decades ago. Now it is all about political power and making up false scares. There is no public heath interest here and the environment itself is not an interest. This is the fallacy, that the environment is itself an interest on a par with humans, if not superior to humans.
Well David,
I’m sure that there are more than a few Utilitiy companies and coal companies that would agree with you from the sense that they wish the EPA would just go away and stop being so pesty about all those expensive scrubbers and keeping the air clean and all that nonsense. Too bad we just can’t go back to the good ol’ days before the clean air and clean water act, eh? They just get in the way of good old fashioned capitalism, right?
In terms of the environment, even thinking it is separate thing from human health and well-being is pitifully short-sighted. As goes the environment, so goes humanity. It’s a mutual, one-for-all, all-for-one thing. Seems many just can’t grasp this basic fact.
Scrubbers are not about clean air. They are about trace amounts of SO2 which are harmless, but which are controlled under the 1990 CAAA due to the bogus acid rain scare promulgated by EPA and the Greens. Pricing coal out of existence is the perfect example of the harm you people are doing.
Clean air is a specialized version of the Great Green Goal of zero discharge, which requires zero humans. Clean air means no trace of humans. This is fundamental. Clean enough is not an option.
Excessive cleanliness is a form of insanity.
The EPA regulations in effect thru the 1980s and 1990s were plenty good enough to make our environment quite liviable and pleasant. However, the new MACT rules, CO2 pollution, and mercury rules are NOT making our environment better. They do nothing but dramatically increase cost for everyone. This leads to fuel poverty, lost jobs, a bad economy, increased death and sickness to the less well off. The EPA is currently all about bringing and end to the use of fossil fuels in the US.
We need to get back to the ALARA principle at the EPA. This would invovle a cost/benefit analysis. Also, the EPA should not get to write and enforce its own rules. It should propose rules, and then those rules must be passed by the house and senate and signed into law before they can enforce them. Just imagine if every local police station could write and enforce its own laws.
I’m sure David’s rabid anti-Green sentiments, with only the most tenuous connection to reality, will in no way pollute his planned propa….sorry…..educational material he is preparing for High Schools.
Given that schools now teach official government CAGW propaganda as a religious faith not to be questioned under any circumstances, this can only be an improvement.
More shite from Goldenberg. Pacific Institute have NOT cleared Gleick,
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/25/paging-suzanne-goldenberg-and-guardian-editors-pacific-institute-says-gleick-review-not-final/
Judith. The Guardian on AGW has as much credibility as the huckster Pachauri. Back off, for your own good!
Interesting that clicking on “Jeremy Poynton” brings up a Man City site. I think that my team NUFC finishing fifth was more surprising than City ending their 44-year championship drought. But congrats all the same.
re; sea level rise
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs2-00/
Sea level is still below that attained in previous interglacial periods. Assuming there was no anthropogenic forcing during previous interglacial periods then it would appear current sea level is still well within the bounds of natural variation. At 3mm rise per year it will be 1000 years before we reach even the lowest estimate of past interglacial peaks in sea level.
Be unafraid. Be VERY unafraid.
So tell me, how did cities fare with the rising sea levels in those prior interglacials?
Weren’t bothered at bit, not a bit.
“The Sky Is Falling!”
cackle cackle cackle
Andrew
What happens to cities today if they spend all their money fighting greenhouse gases and it turns out that sea level rise is natural and happens anyway? It costs money to adapt to sea level rise. If you aren’t sure you can stop it you better spend your money backing the f*ck away from it or building seawalls. The point of my comment was that in climate intervals the same as today’s sea level has risen higher without anthropogenic influence. Your response was lame even for you.
All your comment demonstrated is that sea level can get much higher, that the ice caps are very sensitive to temperature increases. As per usual skeptics completely misread the implications of paleodata.
Mercury, Gemini, Apollo,…
The year of the dragon.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47576793/ns/technology_and_science-space/
The Dragon, as China.
Rev 12:9 And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
lolwot, still stuck on the mystery of 394 ppm.
Since it is nearly time for week in review, I nominate RP junior’s http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2012/05/uk-gm-wheat-war-not-really-about.html
I am not particularly for or against GM foods, but I tend to distrust the trend of over regulation under the pretext of protecting society from themselves. There are more than enough laws offering recourse to people that fall victim to bad business practices, but not much recourse for bad government practices.
It is not just GM. All biological scientists who work on animals are called ‘vivisectionists’; although we almost never dissect living animals.
Kaczynski bombed geneticists, he hated scientists who were investigating the linkage between genes and behavior.
In the UK ‘Animal Rights’ terrorism is far worse than in the USA, but I am glad that I work in Houston, rather than in NY or California.
There are thousands of well motivated, well funded, groups who oppose animal testing and have the ‘science’ which proves that animal experiments retard investigations in humans. It is the sort of opposite of climate science; the general claim is that, say neuroncologists, believe that treating a explanted human brain tumor in a nude mouse is exactly the same as treating one in a patient. As it happens we treat animal experiments as, well animal experiments, that act as a guide and test system, nothing more and nothing less.
However, when we are subjected to decades long deformation campaigns, slanderous articles and abusive emails; no one stands up for us. Just like the gene jockeys who want to splice vitamin synthesis genes into plants or make them salt tolerant.
Never expect the Guardian to support biomedicals or plant gene jockeys.
“Houston, (where) we have (less of) a problem.”
I fail to see how anyone could substantially cite the guardian and condone Gleick’s actions while equating fraud with a bad billboard and still believe they have maintained objectivity. Credibility lost is hard won back, at least among people who don’t believe everything they read in the guardian.
NW and other skeptics, let’s look at the climate-change game-board one more time. Who’s got a winning strategy?
Hansen and his colleagues accurately foresaw, back in mid-2011, what no skeptic foresaw, precisely what we see now in the satellite data … reversion of sea-level rise to the base-line rise of 3.18 mm/year (actually, somewhat above it).
Now these same scientists predict, what no skeptic predicts, further “acceleration of the rate of sea level rise this decade.”
Supposing that Hansen’s predicted acceleration is observed … let us say an observed sea-level rise during 2012-2022 of 40-50 millimeters (that is, a couple of inches). Needless to say, this would be *hugely* above the historical sea-level rise rate … it would correspond to a sea-level rise since Roman times of 8-10 meters!
It is therefore certain that a fulfillment of Hansen’s prediction would panic the insurance industry. And we already see the the “Heartburn for Heartland” effect of this strategic reality, in the abrupt departure of all of Heartland Institute’s insurance experts. Because *they* appreciate that Hansen is playing a winning hand.
What are the further implications of a correct Hansen prediction, for Heartland-style skepticism? Well, all the options look pretty bad:
Bad Option 1: Deny the sea-level data, and lobby for satellite shut-down. But Heartland has zero influence with foreign satellite programs, and worse, sea-level rise of a couple of inches is so big that folks don’t need satellites.
Bad Option 2: Deny the validity of Hansen’s theoretical, and claim that the observed sea-level surge is just a random fluctuation. But that’s the typical claim of a loser “My opponent was lucky” … the insurance industry in particular will not accept this claim.
Bad Option 3: Deny the harm in sustained sea-level rise (and the accompanying climate change). Here too the validity of this claim will be utterly rejected by the insurance industry.
So that’s the *real* story behind “Heartbreak for Heartland” … it’s the story of the foreseeable near-term collapse of Heartland’s deny-deny-deny brand of climate change skepticism.
Needless to say, the Heartland Institute’s insurance specialists appreciate this reality plainly. Which is why they have all departed, leaving Joe Blast alone in his embrace of the deny-deny-deny strategy.
And that is why, if in the coming decade Nature fulfills James Hansen’s predictions, then history will conclude: “Well-played, James Hansen. The score is game, set, match, for science.”
So now James Hansen is a modern-day Noah? You seem to feel that Hansen has inside information and we should all be True Believers in his Warmist religeon too for our own good or we’ll all go to hell.
Wagathon, it’s simple. James Hansen and his colleagues are prophets of Nature, not prophets of Jehovah.
Insurance executives appreciate that the track-record of the former is far more accurate than the track-record of the latter.
Which is a major element of Judith’s headline “Heartburn at Heartland” — because all of Heartland’s insurance experts have decamped.
Heartland’s remnant staff are falling-back on Joe Bast’s deny-deny-deny strategy … which looks less-and-less rational with each passing month.
The strategy you describe of attempting salvage credibility from the wreckage of failed hysterical AGW prognostications sounds more like”game” theory practiced by the desperate who grasp at straws to avoid the consequnces of their prior delusionary behavior.
Wagathon, please let me remind you that, as in previous years, Anthony Watts/WUWT is providing a venue to demonstrate that skeptics can predict climate more accurately than scientists (via the SEARCH Sea Ice Outlook forum).
In recent years the performance of climate-change skeptics has been … well … dismal. Hmmmmmm.
Perhaps Joe Bast/Heartland will venture a prediction for the 2012 ice season? If Joe/Heartland can demonstrate that skepticism is more accurate than science, this might encourage Heartland’s former insurance-industry partners to return.
It is just *MORE* babble to conflate the tracking of sea ice extent with feckless speculations about global warming seal level rise. The ice covering Greenland is not slideing into the sea nor is Antarctica shrinking nor are oceans expanding due to the waters become warming during a time such as we are in now when the oceans are in a cooling trend and have been for more than a decade with no end to the cooling in sight.
Both greenland and antarctic are melting. Yes into the sea. The oceans are warming.
Joy
why the change of personna?
tonyb
FoMd…. I guess you think the CAGW scientists predictions are more accurate? Lets take Mark Serreze’s prediction, senior scientist at the government’s snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colorado. He claims the artic would be ice free in 2012.Want to buy stock based on his advice?
http://toryaardvark.com/2012/05/16/2007-warming-alarmist-prediction-arctic-sea-ice-will-be-gone-in-summer-2012/
I think for the first time, after reading these posts, I’m sensing fear from the AGW folks. That’s kind of odd, knowing that they have the media and the gov behind them to push the mantra. Fear is a funny thing, hunters sense it and take advantage of it :)
Hansen is, was and shall be wrong. AGW believers are still buying into dubious data, deceptive regarding ice mass loss,and always relying on prophecies far into the future that are always changed when the present arrives at the date of predicted doom.
AGW socaial mania is as always just another popular delusion.
If James Hansen does have inside information about rising seas swallowing up all of us sinners who are guilty of engaging in the business of living I’m guessing it’s the prophet Al Gore that’s whispering in his ear.
I’ve noticed accusations of lying are commonly made without any regard for what lying actually is. Here we have lolwot saying:
lolwot doesn’t claim gnomish knows what he says is false. He simply says gnomish doesn’t know it for a fact. This means he claims gnomish is speaking with more certainty than he can justify, and thus is lying. Of course, that’s not what lying means.
It’s sort of like how WebHubTelescope said a person told a lie, then followed that with (paraphrased), “And I think you know it’s a lie” If the person didn’t what he said was untrue, he couldn’t possibly be lying about it.
To be clear, being wrong doesn’t mean someone is lying. Having unjustified beliefs doesn’t mean someone is lying. Lying is only when a person says something they know not to be true.
Brandon, your post concisely explains why all of the Heartland Institute’s insurance specialists left.
Their reasoning is simple: Joe Bast’s deny-deny-deny strategy confronted Heartland’s insurance specialists with an unpalatable choice:
This choice being unpalatable either way, everyone left Heartland.
Is this a fake quote? Imagine that!
Hats off to Arno Arrak for his succinct and spot-on discussion of how temperatures bear zippo relation to CO2 levels in the atmosphere. When you add this to the additional proofs that human activity is an infinitesimal fraction of the VARIABILITY, let alone the absolute values, of other sources of CO2, and that CO2 in its entirety is an infinitesimal fraction of the VARIABILITY of all other factors affecting climate – an infinitesimal of an infinitesimal – how could there be stronger proof that AGW is a lie? And then consider the tactics of the AGW scaremongers – those alone should cast suspicion on their arguments.
Worth mentioning again that 2 billion years ago, before the appearance of the blue-green algae that converted it into oxygen, the Earth’s atmosphere was 20 percent CO2? Let the AGW liars-scarwemongers explain why the Earth didn’t burn up way back then.
Hats off also to David Springer for his comments on sea levels. Incidentally, during the Height of the Roman Empire Warming Period, 100BC-300AD, sea levels were 15 feet higher than today, as evidenced by the Roman port of Ostia, then a thriving harbor, now well inland and high and dry. Likewise, Venice could not be settled until the 6th century because before that the islands it sits on were 10 feet under water.
The criminal reactionary leftists who are pushing AGW should personally be made to pay for the economic harm their conspiracy to violate our inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness will do to the world. It IS about liberty, and their desire and intention to destroy liberty.
One more thought regarding the AGW scaremongers’ claim that all skeptics are far right politically: Let’s look at the definition of “far right.” Isn’t it the expectation that us ordinary folk should bow and scrape before the elite? isn’t it old money? isn’t it authoritarian impulses? isn’t it clinging to inhumane ideas long since discredited? Guess who I’ve just described: Al Gore.
Chad, insurance risk-assessors bear a professional obligation to weigh all the available evidence … not ideologically cherry-picked portions of it.
That is the simple reason these professionals left the Heartland Institute: professional ethics obliged them to leave.
No, they bear professional obligation to make sure that premiums exceed claims.
David, your post stands directly opposed to the ethical standards of the risk management profession.
Perhaps, like you, Joe Bast/Heartland has not understood these ethical standards? Is this why Heartland’s risk-management team has departed?
About changing your mind in the climate debate: Well, I changed my mind based on reading the literature, from, at first accepting the CAGW meme to later questionning it. People like John Daly and David Evans alerted me to the weakness of the evidence. The relief. )
About recognizing and questionning the flaws of organizations, as we’re doing on this thread. I’ve come to see the IPCC as an irrelevant organizatin, based on its preconceived starting point and its promulgation of the flawed Hockey Stick. And I’m also disillusioned with the UN, promulgating government at a distance by an elitist, interventionist, (need Mike to help me out here,) clique of well heeled shamen.
A United Nations’ scenario:
Morning ar the Assembly.
10.00 am:Talkfest further to imposing ‘our’ world order on the world.
Afternoon at the Assembly.
2.00 pm: Planning new initiative further to imposing government control over the internet.
5.00 pm: Meet for drinks.
So I say let’s defund the IPCC and the UN. Use some of the money saved for lean, mean, specifically targetted, pragmatic programs identified by the Copenhagen Consensus think tank… mosquito nets, child immunization programs, effective education projects… Maybe we could discuss them over drinks.
Wise, practical suggestions that will never be implemented
Dr. Curry,
When the AGW consensus promoters made a good living off of comparing skeptics with nazis and calling for trials based on crimes against humanity I do not recall you dismissing those (many) individuals or groups. I am also aware of
nothing that has cleared Gleick of his fraud, of the CRU/climategate e-mails showing thier mendacity, nor of lack of trends in extreme weather worldwide over the past ~150 years. Dismissing HI may be a fun distraction, but I would respectfully point out that is just that: a distraction at best.
One other point I forgot to mention re the far right: making rules for other people that don’t apply to yourself: It’s OK to burn 10 times as much electricity (mostly from coal-fired power plants!) in your house as the average American family, and fly hither and yon by yourself in a Boeing 727 – but not OK for John Q. Public to drive an SUV. Al Gore again!
A afan —
Whether or not there are ethical problems at Heartland has nothing to do with the FACT that AGW is a fascist lie, and the people promoting it are dead set against liberty and prosperity, and are determined to destroy them. And yes, they are reactionaries, not liberals or progressives in the true meaning of these terms. They want to return to an age when a tiny elite controlled every detail of people’s lives and possessed all the wealth of society.
Chad, plenty of thoughtful citizens share your concern about a world in which “a tiny elite possesses all the wealth of society.”
Though AGW is real, serious, and accelerating … none-the-less AGW is perhaps *not* the worst aspect of carbon energy economies.
Sea level on U.S. Gulf Coast during past several thousand years.
http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/coast/images/ap7-Aten-Bollich-2002-Fig30.jpg
During a 500 year interval from approximately 0 – 500AD the Gulf of Mexico was 1 meter higher than today.
Any questions, class?
One might hope the above information will be particularly memorable for Professor Curry since this is her back yard as well as mine.
Since no one else is asking let me ask the obvious.
How well do these rises and falls in the Gulf of Mexico line up with Roman Climate Optimum, Medieval Warm Period, and Little Ice Age?
I’m glad I asked. They line up quite well.
David Springer
I am connecting up all those periods in my series of articles on sea level in well documented Britain, carried here;
http://judithcurry.com/2011/07/12/historic-variations-in-sea-levels-part-1-from-the-holocene-to-romans/
tonyb
Britain is probably more difficult than the US Gulf Coast due to it being so much farther north and thus subject to local glacial depression and rebound of the crustal plate. The Gulf Coast is subtropical and hasn’t been close to any glaciation in the hundreds of millions of years since the last snowball earth episode.
It is my understanding that the sea level graph is largely based on carbon dating of cultural artifacts uncovered on dry land. There is less confidence in the lower limits because these artifacts tend to be destroyed when sea level returns to a level high enough cover them and of course archeological digs are not possible in areas currently below sea level.
Italy and the Middle East are not good locations to study global sea level. Italy is practically astride the boundary between the Eurasian and African continental plates. As you go east from there it gets worse as you run into the Arabian plate and thus have a confluence of three plates bucking and heaving against each other.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Plates_tect2_en.svg
U.S. Gulf Coast by comparison is very stable. West coast of Africa just below the equator is probably the ideal spot for stability and inhabited by humans longer than anywhere else too.
David
As you will notice, my study includes papers on the problems with the tectonic plates and a discussion of the glacial rebound/depression. The overall estimate is that sea levels are still one to two feet lower today than they were in Roman times.
tonyb
Yes I read the paper but it doesn’t change the veracity of my point that the British Isles and the Mediterranean are poor areas for studying global sea level due to confounding factors. Of course you can mitigate the confounding factors to some extent but the mitigation is highly error prone. Stable regions not subject to so much subsidence and/or rebound are better choices. High levels of agriculture and/or land use change are also problematic in that variations in underground aquifer level causes tide guage readings to change. You can see this in a study done on the U.S. east coast around Virginia using foraminifera distribution. Right around the time the tobacco plantations sprung up there was a sudden change in sea level as vast stretches of coastal area was denuded of forests to make way for tobacco fields. It happens in a lot of places in ways you wouldn’t expect. With the advent of the steam engine it got worse because the first application of steam power was for pumping ground water to the surface which causes the land to sink.
Something doesn’t seem right with that graph on literal interpretation.
3 meters sea level rise within a few decades? What could have caused that? How do you get 3 meters extra water into the oceans in a matter of decades? How much thermal expansion and ice melt do you need? Seems a little…implausible….
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/rapid-change-feature.html
“New research into the Earth’s paleoclimate history by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies director James E. Hansen suggests the potential for rapid climate changes this century, including multiple meters of sea level rise, if global warming is not abated.”
Why don’t you write to Dr. Hansen and ask HIM how multiple meters of sea level rise are possible in a single century?
David, the free-as-in-freedom analyses that you seek, that assess mechanisms for rapid acceleration of sea-level rise, are James Hansen’s “Scientific reticence and sea level rise” (arXiv:physics/0703220v1, 2007):
followed by Hansen’s “Paleoclimate Implications for Human-Made Climate Change” (arXiv:1105.0968v3, 2001):
Insurance risk assessors have a professional responsibility to inform clients of these risks. Which is why the Heartland Institute’s insurance professionals have all left — the ethical standards of the risk-assessment profession are incompatible with Bast/Heartland institutional practices.
But there is no evidence that the acceleration is actually happening is there? So when is it going to happen?
Hansen’s answer is simple and direct: ascendency of ice melt leads us to anticipate acceleration of the rate of sea level rise this decade.
If Hansen’s predicted acceleration is observed, will it be “game over” for climate-change skepticism?
The short answer is “Yes.” The longer answer is “Mostly, with aging cranks and subsidized shills as notable exceptions.”
“subsidized shills”
What a good way of describing government climatologists.
If the rate of sea level rise accelerates by over 400% by 2020 ( which would be necessary to get to a 1 meter rise by 2100) I will change my position. If it does not will you agree that Hansen was fundamentally wrong regarding the rate of change that should be attributed to increases CO2?
Rob, for me there are broadly three scenarios for the coming 10-20 years:
• Sustained FALL in sea-level (as predicted by numerous skeptical theories … each different from the next) Our present understanding of Earth’s energy budget is just plain wrong.
• Sustained RISE in sea-level, but no pronounced acceleration (as predicted by some climate models, but not all) Our present (provisional) understanding of GHGs, clouds, aerosols, and ice-sheets needs tuning.
• Accelerating RISE in sea-level (as predicted by Hansen and colleagues) Our present (provisional) understanding of GHGs, clouds, aerosols, and ice-sheets is basically correct.
As for timing, we’ll surely learn a lot in the coming ten years, and we’ll be pretty certain which scenario is right in twenty years.
The recent acceleration in sea level rise rates (as seen by satellites in the last six months) is consistent with Hansen’s third scenario.
I just blundered onto this FAQ website with some undocumented assertions about how salinity, currents, winds, and temperatures change the sea level 1 to 2 meters, thats 1000 to 2000 mm, from the geode.
Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level
http://www.psmsl.org/train_and_info/faqs/
[1]…These currents lead to differences between the MSS and the geoid of 1-2 m, even after averaging out time dependent motions such as tides. The differences in the MSS generated by the currents means that the Atlantic is 1m lower on the north side of the Gulf Stream than further south.
[3]Sea level is about 20 cm higher on the Pacific side [of the Panama Canal] than the Atlantic due to the water being less dense on the Pacific side, on average, and due to the prevailing weather and ocean conditions. Such sea level differences are common across many short sections of land dividing ocean basins.
[4]…Note also that the tides have opposite phase on the two sides of Panama, so, if there was a sea level canal, there would be major tidal currents through it.
Kinda hard to get excited about 10 mm
Re the AP7-Aten sea level curve. Perhaps it is a change in currents and/or a change in freshwater influx that accounts for a relatively rapid sea level change in the GOM.
Take the sea level curve with a grain of salt. You must account for subsidence and while you can assume it is constant, with slumping and meandering of the bird-foot, there is no reason to expect uniform subsidence.
Sounds like Panama would be a good place to implement large-scale tidal power generation
Sea level differences across sections of land dividing ocean basins are fascinating! 2 meters!
Louise re death threats to Australian scientists.
As usual ‘The Guardian,’ 06/05/12 got it wrong.See ‘The Australian’ report, ‘Climate scientists claims of email death threats go up in smoke.’
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/climate-scientists-claims-of-email-death-threats-go-up-in-smoke/story-e6frgcjx-1226345224816
Pure venom, with a side of crazy.”
Does hate rhetoric like the following sound familiar to Climate Etc. readers?
No excuses can be made hate rhetoric like this.
You’ve lost the war AFOMD. Give it up while you have a shred of credibility left.
She comes across as a very nice person. A shame one side’s nuts send her hate mail because she doesn’t agree with their point of view and the other side’s nuts doesn’t even think she should have a job in science because she is religious, isn’t it?
“the other side’s nuts doesn’t even think she should have a job in science because she is religious”
Do you have any evidence of that?
You have been around a long time Nick. I can only assume you are joking.
A great many celebrated mathematicians, scientists, and engineers have been people of faith: Werner von Braun, Francis Collins, and Jane Goodall all come to mind. Not to mention (in the context of climate change) Pope Benedict and the entire Pontifical Academy of Science. :)
Summary: a fast sure way to receive abuse is to affirm:
More-and-more persons of faith are coming to appreciate this.
Another way to look at it is to observe that many people tend to try to categorize people into groups and then to make broad conclusions about their future behaviors based upon the group to which they have been assigned. Personally the practice seems intellectually lazy but I acknowledge it is an effective tool in persuasive communication.
“Not to mention (in the context of climate change)…”
Or Sir John Houghton. It’s pretty hard to say anyone held him back because of his faith.
I don’t recall saying anyone was held back. If they were I would probably have never heard of them. But just to clarify my point since some seem confused, if you argue that those that believe in intelligent design are not scientifically inclined, you are arguing against everyone that believes in intelligent design. You can not pick and choose that this person believes in intelligent design but she is ok because she agrees with me on the climate. Now if you haven’t seen anyone make that argument I can only be completely baffled as to how you missed it. It doesn’t matter if the argument was directed at Spencer or Christy, the argument is the same regardless. Of course I haven’t seen any great propensity towards consistency of argument since taking up this argument as a hobby so no need to start now.
@A fan of *MORE* discourse
[“Not to mention (in the context of climate change) Pope Benedict and the entire Pontifical Academy of Science’]
————————
I covered the PAS paper for the largest Catholic Forum on the web.
I challenge your statement!
I will even give you blog space to do so…[ click on my name here].
There are words you never have heard The Pope say from The Chair….These are AGW …CAGW… Anthropogenic Climate Change….
That leaves what kind of climate change? [ Natural Climatic Changes and Natural Disasters ]
Second:
Give your evidence for The “entire” Pontifical Academy of Science.
Kim2ooo, please direct your weblog’s readers to the Vatican’s own Pontifical Academy of Sciences website, where they can download (free-as-in-freedom) the April 2011 report “Fate of Mountain Glaciers in the Anthropocene”, together with the Pontifical Academy’s summary statement:
Kim2000, hopefully this Pontifical Academy statement clarifies matters for you.
Now, if only Joe Bast/Heartland and Anthony Watts/WUWT had the common-sense to tune their spiriitual understanding to the Vatican’s spiritual wavelength — rather than Heartland/WUWT’s present, disastrous Manson/Kaczynski spiritual wavelength — then we might see witness some progress! :)
http://climaterealistponderings.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/as-promised/#comment-121
As promised
Posted on May 28, 2012
I have debated the use of The Pontifical Academy of Science Paper Titled “Fate of Mountain Glaciers
in the Anthropocene”.
Some would wish us to believe that:
1 This is an Official Paper of the Pontifical Academy of Science.
2: That this paper is endorsed by the Pontifical Academy of Science.
3: That this paper is an endorsement by The Vatican and even The Pope.
It is none of these!
The paper is written by the same folks that brought us “Glacier Gate” and IPCC leads.Including IPCC’s main lead R.
Pachauri.
Here are the authors:
Ajai, L. Bengtsson, D. Breashears, P.J. Crutzen, S. Fuzzi, W. Haeberli, W.W. Immerzeel, G.
Kaser, C. Kennel, A. Kulkarni, R. Pachauri, T. H. Painter, J. Rabassa, V. Ramanathan, A.
Robock, C. Rubbia, L. Russell, M. Sánchez Sorondo, H.J. Schellnhuber, S. Sorooshian, T. F.
Stocker, L.G. Thompson, O.B. Toon, D. Zaelke, J. Mittelstraß
Working Group Co-chairs are underlined. [From the paper ]
So how many of these authors are actual members?
2 plus one ex-offical
Let’s look at the Lead Author. The group’s co-chair, Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen, signed the Humanist Mansefesto – a very
un Catholic stance. An Atheist.
So if the “entire” Pontifical Academy of Science endorsed this paper…….We seem to be missing 78 signatures.
The paper referred: Isn’t even a Pontifical Academy of Science Paper. It was commissioned by the PAS…mainly by one person
within the PAS, to report TO the PAS. It is a “Working Group Paper” as it clearly states. “A Report by the Working Group
Commissioned by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences”.
Many like to refer to the “PRAYER” WITHIN THE WORKING PAPER” as if this came from the Pontifical Academy of Science.
Catholics don’t usually abide by Atheist prayers…For that matter…Identify The Catholics within this Working Group. [ I can
only identify one – for sure ].
The commissioner of this working group has had some other questionable “Working Groups“.Which prompted this reply from the
OFFICIAL SPOKES PERSON OF THE VATICAN…””The statement is not a statement of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences because the
Pontifical Academy of Sciences as such — 80 members — wasn’t consulted about it and will not be consulted about it,” Bishop
Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, the academy’s chancellor, told Catholic News Service.
The statement, which was recently made public by a private science-publishing company in the Netherlands, also “has no
value as the magistrate of the church,” he said in an e-mail response to questions Dec. 1.
Later the same day, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, issued a similar communique, adding that the
pro-GM statement “cannot be considered an official position of the Holy See.”
”The working group consists of glaciologist, climate scientists, meteorologists, hydrologists,
physicists, chemists, mountaineers, and lawyers organized by the Pontifical Academy of
Sciences at the Vatican, to contemplate the observed retreat of the mountain glaciers, its causes
and consequences. This report resulted from a workshop in April 2011 at the Vatican.” AND at least ONE rail road engineer….
R. Pachauri.
The Pope has NOT spoken from “The Chair” these words: “Anthropogenic Global Warming”. “AGW”. “Anthropocene”?
That leaves one: “Natural Climate Changes” does it not?
As a Fact, Pope Benedict XVI’s Prayer Intentions For January 2012
General Intention: Victims of “Natural Disasters”.
“That the victims of “natural disasters” may receive the spiritual and material comfort they need to rebuild their lives.”
Sorry Beth,
The Australian report got it hopelessly wrong…….no surprises there.
Hayhoe told the Globe and Mail:
For how long, and to what pitch of insanity, will climate-change hate-speech continue to increase?
The two most active and prominent climate-change forums that tolerate hate speech are WUWT and Climate Etc. That is why posters on these forums, especially, have a moral obligation to speak plainly against hate speech.
I frequent WUWT on a daily basis and never… and I mean never do I see hate speech tolerated. Perhaps a derogatory comment or two by sceptics against warmists and warmists against sceptics but NOTHING that would classify as virulent hate speech. I would have to say that you have made a patently FALSE allegation. I challange you to provide one link to WUWT that shows virulent hate speech being promulgated by sceptics against the warmists.
alcheson – Anthony himself questioned whether I’m mentally ill. He repeated the claim on this blog but Dr Curry deleted it. It may not be foul language but it was clearly hateful.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/23/fakegate-why-the-perps-should-be-prosecuted/#comment-917466
That is not hateful.
Louise, “You are crazy” is not hate speech, in fact it is standard rhetoric in the climate debate. In my collection I am particularly fond of “Skeptics are delusional ignoramuses,” a most colorful variant. You were there I believe, when I collected it, because we were discussing your Spice Girls attack on Dr. Curry. That was you, right? Nothing hateful about that, right? Hate and hateful are two different critters. Hate is serious, while hateful is just boorish and rude.
My sympathies reside wholly with Louise. Good on yah, Louise! Never let the hate-spouters and quibblers get yah down! :)
The quibbling excuses that climate-change skeptics are offering for homicidal hate-language are revealing (IMHO) of a profound moral bankruptcy that is spreading like wildfire within the climate skepticism movement.
It seems to me that a very considerable portion of the blame for this moral bankruptcy attaches to one forum, and to the person responsible for it: WUWT/Anthony Watts.
It was Anthony Watts who elicited-and-condoned violent commentary with his WUWT essay of April 18, 2011 titled “Charles Manson becomes an advocate for global warming“.
With that disastrous essay, Anthony Watts first “sowed the wind”, and in following Anthony’s lead, the Heartland Institute has now “reaped the whirlwind.”
The climate skepticism movement has now become so thoroughly identified with hate speech, that it seems scarcely likely that it can ever recover.
In contrast, James Hansen’s recent article “The Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature” (arXiv:1110.1365v3, 2011), with its distinguished list of 18 coauthors that includes both religious authorities and professional ethicists, has seized the moral and scientific high ground in the climate change debate …
… the moral high ground that Anthony Watts and Joe Bast have so unwisely abandoned.
After reading your post in the link…I think Mr Watts Question has some merit.
@A fan of *MORE* discourse | May 27, 2012 at 5:04 pm |
It was Anthony Watts who elicited-and-condoned violent commentary with his WUWT essay of April 18, 2011 titled “Charles Manson becomes an advocate for global warming“.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Ha ha ha ha.
How about quoting Mr Watts.
Mr Watts own words:
“From the Daily Mail, probably the worst alliance you could hope for if you are in the global warming movement. Manson says in a from prison interview:”
AND
“I didn’t know they gave Internet access in prison. Or maybe it’s old magazines. Either way, not the sort of advocate you dream about having.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/18/charles-manson-becomes-an-advocate-for-global-warming/
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
ROFLMAO
@alcheson
[” I challange you to provide one link to WUWT that shows virulent hate speech being promulgated by sceptics against the warmists.]
WELL SAID!!
They have group homes and short buses for people who get confused easily.
alcheson | May 27, 2012 at 2:24 pm |
How odd. I once frequented WUWT regularly, until it became apparent that hate speech was not only tolerated but encouraged, so long as it was directed in the right direction.
So I shook the dust of the place from my sandals, and do not grant my traffic to them.
I keep hearing it’s much better now than it was all those years ago, but I really don’t see it worth wasting my time to go back.
Websites are a dime a dozen. There’s no reason to use them if they abuse or bully anyone.
Sorry, Michael, here’s some cited history.
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2012/05/death-threat-fictions
Oh dear.
Quadrant simply copies most of the errors from The Australian, like the hopelessly messed up time lines, and the major error – confusing the original Canberra Times story with a subsequent FOI query that related to only one 6 month period at one University.
Fancy the ‘skeptics’ just taking this at face value without checking it out.
I’m shocked, I tell you, just shocked.
A fan –
Agreed that the ruinous economic effect of chasing the carbon bogeyman isn’t the worst of it. The worst of it is the loss of liberty and the Orwellization of information. Somehow, we have to find a way to get the skeptic message across to John Q. Public in a way that the average uninformed person can understand and believe.
Hate speech coming from the AGW scaremongers should be no surprise to anyone. For them, like the good Marxist-Ingsoc reactiobnaries they are, the end justifies the means, and when you can’t win an argument by reason and facts, you win it by deceit, intimidation and violence.
Last I heard, hate speech can be a crime, and if it isn’t it should be. Could we prosecute those fascists in Australia (or anywhere) for sending hate speech through the mails (including through email)? It would be nice if we could – it’s criminal behavior, plain and simple, and it indelibly marks the senders as hate criminals.
Judith.
They have no lost the debate … because nobody WILL debate. They made a tactical error on the level of the 10:10 video…that’s all.
The use of the Guardian as a reputable source and the tone of your piece does nothing for your reputation.
Michael
It’s a pity you didn’t bother to check your facts.The Australian got it right.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/the-science-is-in-we-were-right-on-death-threat-emails/story-e6frg996-1226364957455
Interesting…. I clicked your link and found no evidence (proof) of threatening emails.
Johanna 25/05 11.23 re Phil Harding of Time Team, his career and contribution to palaeo-archeology. I said he reminds me of my father, another self made man who took out world patents and used to tell his children, ‘ If you get in for nothing you clap.’ Annoyed us at the time :-)
Beth Cooper
Hi Beth
Thought you might be interested in my time team type investigations (on a less exalted level of course)
These are the bluebells currently blooming on the uplands of Dartmoor very near where I live. The view is to Greator rocks
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alpew/sets/72157626556620247/
Behind this Tor is Houndtor medieval village;
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/hound-tor-deserted-medieval-village/history-and-research/
English Heritage is a quasi Govt organisation who are obviously not toeing the line that Global warming is unprecedented.
This one is more descriptive;
http://www.legendarydartmoor.co.uk/hound_sett.htm
I am currently trying to write an article that more accurately dates the deterioration of the climate sometime in the 14th century from the warmth of the MWP (exemplified by the abandonment of Houndtor village) by examining historical records and evidence on the ground.
We are fortunate in being able to trace our historical documentation back a thousand years and to this end I recently visited The library of the 12th Century Exeter Cathedral and went through their material of the 13th/14th century and on Tuesday go to see the medieval scrolls held by the Devon Records office and then on to the 21st Century Met office which has excellent archives and ironically lie no more than ten miles from the deserted village. I have offered to take them on a magical mystery tour of Dartmoor’s abundant climate change antiquities but they don’t seem to want to go.
Incidentally Hound tor is where Sherlock Holmes investigated ‘the Hounds of the baskervilles’. There is an excellent snack van in the car park there that calls itself the hound of the basket meals.
tonyb
Hi Tony,
You live in a wonderful region, Dartmoor …Lorna Doone, and you are jest the right person for the place. I look forward to reading yer next article. (Tell Stefan to get lost! ) lol
Beth
I’ve reluctantly come to the conclusion that Sefan is a warmist troll. No genuine sceptic would want to so diminish all our collective efforts by so regularly coming up with the nonsense he manages to do. Any non committed person reading his stuff on this blog would come to the conclusion that sceptics are totally irrational. So I reckon he is a trojan troll :)
He needs to prove otherwise by writing something reasoned and credible. How about doing that Stefan the Warmist?
tonyb
I see no difference between stefanthedenier and any other wacko skeptic. The fact that he is aggressive in fighting back may be because of his Aussie stripes.
I have yet to find a reasonable skeptic, Liubos and Willis come closest that I can think of.
Perhaps you do not understand reason, or reasoning, or both. Or just how a reasonable person can simply disagree with you? In any case you have a problem.
David
Unfortunatelt Web-who no doubt has many other virtues- seems to have a very closed mind on climate change and likes to put everyone with a different perspective to his in to one convenient box labelled ‘Mad sceptics.’
tonyb
Many people have difficulty with disagreement.
WHT makes up for his opinionated viewpoints with his high self-esteem and his charm.
Tony @ 6.10 am:
‘Hound of the basket meals’ lol.
A magical mystery tour of the antiquities of the moors? Do they have no imagination?
Beth
The Beatles filmed part of MMT on Dartmoor. Their bus got stuck for some hours on one of the narrowest bridges.
In case you are a fan of the current Sherlock here are some stills from his filmg on Hound tor for the BBC tv series.
http://www.benedictcumberbatch.co.uk/Sherlock/the-hounds-of-baskerville-p/
tony
Billboard idea for HI.
: )
John
PS – also posted at WUWT
Except that reality isn’t saying that. So the billboard would be offering up a lie. Is that what HI wants to be associated with?
R Gates
Reality isnt saying that sea levels will rise by up to 12m by 2100 as Hansen does. Do you agree with Hansen? Surely not. So therefore you must logically agree with the billboard idea?
BTW Did you look at WUWT about the Australasian tree ring study?
tonyb
John Whitman | May 27, 2012 at 10:55 am
Billboard idea for HI.
Reality is saying to Hansen of NASA – “It’s over Jim.”
– – – – – – – –
R. Gates | May 27, 2012 at 11:10 am
“Except that reality isn’t saying that. So the billboard would be offering up a lie. Is that what HI wants to be associated with?”
– – – – – – – – –
R. Gates,
We know reality has not supported the essential thrusts of Hansen’s bizarrely alarmist projections for the past 30 years.
To roughly paraphrase Feynman,
Hansen was wrong.
John
R. Gates
“It’s over, Jim.” is not REALLY “a lie”, as you suggest.
But (assuming that the “IT” is the late 20th century warming cycle), a more accurate description for the HI billboard would be:
“It’s over for now, Jim.”
(Even though we can all see that it has, indeed, stopped warming since 1998, none of us here know whether or not or when the warming will resume after the current 14+-year hiatus.)
Max
Thank you Dr Curry for including Jo Bast’s response in full. This I think explains where Heartland’s critics among sceptics and lukewarmers went wrong at the beginning of the month:
That exactly conveys what I felt the moment I first saw the billboard. I knew I would never have put it up (influencing drivers on Chicago freeways isn’t really my thing) but I was delighted Heartland had. Aggressive and controversial indeed – and derisive. As Peter Whale put it on Bishop Hill three weeks ago:
Derision is exactly the right thing to aim for in some of the attention-getting in the public debate by now. On that I think Heartland scored a bullseye.
I respect some who differ markedly on this, which is one reason I’ve said little on the subject in the last three weeks. But I think Jo Bast’s response here is truly excellent. I’m glad to hear Heartland is prospering. Unlike many, this initiative and Bast’s calm defence of it confirm for me the importance of the Institute’s leadership in the global debate. Maybe Gleick and the Guardian had a point after all :)
Richard Drake,
I concur with your thoughts 100%.
Thanks for putting it so well.
Heartland got this billboard experience right.
John
Indeed, derision is the explanatory concept we have been looking for. Many thanks.
Why do you think that Joe Bast and Anthony Watts both felt the need to exaggerate their reports of the protestors?
“Those who did show up wore boots on their heads” – I believe only one wore a boot on his head
“I hear she has some video of the cops intervening.” – Lucia corrected Tony that the police just helped her across the road and had no involvement with the protestors. Tony has not corrected his post. I wonder why he wants to ‘big up’ the protests?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/23/hump-day-hilarity-forecast-the-facts-comically-failed-protest-at-the-heartland-conference-in-chicago/#comment-992061
Louise | May 27, 2012 at 11:38 am,
– – – – – –
Louise,
No exaggeration by lucia, Watts and Bast, the protesters were more comical than words can describe. You should have been there to appreciate the hilarity. : )
John
Watts exagerated when he said that the cops intervened, Lucia put him straight and said no they didn’t. He hasn’t corrected the post. Why does he want folks to think the police intervened?
Perhaps Heartland Instutute and its followers were disappointed that there wasn’t a more agressive protest at their conference? They seem to want to play the ‘victim’
From the original post “But this year’s event had a sense of desperation. Speakers spoke about being “victimised” by “warmists” and “alarmists” – scientists and politicians who accept that carbon dioxide emissions from industry are a main driver of climate change.”
Louise,
Poor victim is the PR myth projected by the expensive PR firms for CRU and it’s international Team of CG1 & CG2 notoriety. It is an idiotic myth, they have the lion’s share of gov’t funding & the overwelming support of the MSM plus a sympathetic IPCC ideology, so their self serving victim ploy is as hilarious as the protesters @ ICCC-7.
John
Whoever your quote is from simply did not understand. Society is indeed being victimized by warmists and alarmists, and this was alluded to repeatedly, as it should be. But the videos certainly give no sense of desperation. Quite the contrary, as we are winning on most political fronts.
Here is an understanding account:
http://pjmedia.com/blog/the-climate-change-debate-where-are-we-now/
Note Jim Sensenbrenner’s progress report.
But I particularly like this: “So while much has been accomplished, much remains to be done. Former Apollo astronaut and senator from New Mexico Harrison Schmitt believes the number one priority for the skeptical community is to “recapture” youngsters in the K-12 grades. It’s too late for this generation, he says, because they have become so thoroughly indoctrinated. But Schmitt believes it is critical for the future that young people be given the opportunity to be taught both sides of the climate change debate rather than brainwashed to accept the AGW religion.”
This is of course just what my Heartland climate curriculum project aims to do.
“recapture”, “brainwashing”, “religion”.
Hmmmm, sounds very disininerested and educational.
Educational, yes, but disinterested, no. Thanks to you Greens we have many children who fear their future. We are just trying to set them straight. That is education’s job.
Educations job is to lie to children? Who’d a thought it
David
In this country we are supposed to be allowed to put the other point of view in schools, as a direct result of the High Court case that ruled against ‘An inconvenient truth’ on eight counts.
There were several things that surprised me when I went in to talk on climate to a class of very bright 11 year olds destined mostly for a grammar schol.
The first is that having taken part in plays, songs, dance since the age of five -that all matter of factly put over the damage ‘we’ were doing to the environment generally and Global warming/arctic ice/polar bears in particular- the children were quite nihilistic and thought the world would have effectively shrivelled up by the time they were adults.
The second thing was how vague their idea was on the composition of the atmosphere. Generally they thought co2 constituted some 80% of the atmosphere and that man had provided some 80% of that co2. They had no idea of the proportions of co2 emitted by man and by nature, the carbon cycle and the role of the oceans/trees etc.
So yes, you are right Children do fear for their future and they do need to take a more balanced view of mans activities. I think Hubert Lamb-first director of CRU- had a more humble and balanced view of things, writing this just before his death;
“The idea of climate change has at last taken on with the public after generations which assumed that climate could be taken as constant. But it is easy to notice the common assumption that mans science and modern industry and technology are now so powerful that any change of climate or the environnment must be due to us. It is good for us to be more alert and responsible in our treatment of the environment, but not to have a distorted view of our own importance. Above all, we need more knowledge, education and understanding in these matters.”
Hubert Lamb December 1994
Ps The one encouraging thing is that they had no idea who Al Gore was
Tonyb
I am not lying, Louise. There actually is a debate.
There is ongoing scientific discussion about various aspects of the climate, and there is a shrieking, all-in-brawl on blogs that is mostly about people’s own dogma’s, prejudices and misunderstandings.
David wants to teach children the latter.
For going on 20 years, the main shrieking has been the official alarmist propaganda masquerading as science. David will hopefully be unmasking this charade.
Tony, my teachers report the same fears. It appears to be a process of cohort diffusion, which is why they do not know who Gore is. Someone must be studying this.
But there is a thrust in US scied to identify misconceptions and this fear is a big one. The hard part is introducing the kids to the scientific frontier, as this is not now done in K-12.
Louise,
Are you claiming the police were not watching the protesters and are you saying that the police were not seriously prepped to intervene given the protest intentions to disrupt?
John
Neither of these. I said quite clearly that I think both Anthony Watts and Joe Bast were ‘bigging up’ the protesters and I questioned why they were doing this. I postulated that perhaps they felt that they needed to justify their talk of feeling ‘victimised’ when it can be seen by all right minded individuals that it is the climate scientists who are actually being threatened.
I agree with John Whitman, Joe Bast, Willis Eschenbach, and others making similar comments.
I attended the Heartland Conference. It was well run, fun, upbeat, and very professional. President Joe Bast hired four extra guards, just to be on the safe side. Despite Louise’s apparent wish for some sort of confrontation, the guards thankfully were never needed. But with the eco-lunatic fringe, it’s always better to not take any chances.
Dr. Curry was just being a politician in this billboard matter, and it does not reflect well on her. Nor on some others, who acted as though they have never, ever made a mistake in judgement in their self-righteous, perfect lives. Their holier-than-thou attitude oozes hypocrisy. Some folks jumped on Heartland like ravenous hyenas, and they’re a lot of the same people who shrugged off or excused Gleick’s lies and identity theft, and the 350.org videos, and the 10-10 videos, etc., ad nauseum.
I personally saw nothing wrong with equating believers in the runaway global warming scare with the Unabomber, whose own “FC” polemic was very similar to Gore’s Earth In The Balance. And many climate alarmists go much farther, seriously suggesting that more than 90% of humanity must be exterminated [although I note that not one of them ever leads by example].
If Dr. Curry and others had expended half the energy criticizing those alarmist organizations as they did in criticizing Heartland, they wouldn’t get this kind of criticism directed at them. Nobody likes their kind of self-righteous hypocrisy. If you disagree with someone, then first communicate with them about it in private, before publicly piling on. Put yourself in their place for once. Is that so much to ask?
Heartland is an excellent organization. It is David to the media’s Goliath, and it does a great job on a shoestring budget [which thankfully has increased due to the silly ruckus over one 24-hour billboard]. Instead of publicly scolding them, it would have been just as effective to make a donation, and then write a kind word suggesting a different approach, if that’s how Heartland’s critics really felt. But, No-o-o-o! That would have been too fair, although just as effective. Instead, those lacking a moral compass felt they needed to jump out in front of the baying pack, and take sides with the 350.org, Joe Romm, 10-10, etc. Really unconscionable, IMHO.
Throwing Heartland under the bus for what is truly just one very minor transgression [if even that], showed that for some folks, popularity trumps character. It reflected badly on Heartland’s critics, who should have first noticed the beam in their own eye before pointing out the mote in Heartland’s eye. Next time they should look in the mirror, before deciding to throw stones. Because self-serving hypocrisy is not pretty.
Smokey says that heartland “made a mistake in judgement” but then claims: “I personally saw nothing wrong with equating believers in the runaway global warming scare with the Unabomber”
If Smokey doesn’t see anything wrong with what Heartland did, what does he mean by a “mistake in judgement”?
And IMO I disagree when Smokey says: “Dr. Curry was just being a politician in this billboard matter, and it does not reflect well on her.”
In my opinion Dr Curry’s reporting of this issue has been very fair. Remember it must be hard to put words down for things like this knowing that both sides will scrutinize it and try to find something wrong.
Considering that many skeptic blogs have themselves admitted the heartland shouldn’t have run those ads – and even Smokey has – how can you turn on Dr Curry for reporting along that line?
If you want to defend the billboards then defend them. Don’t flip-flop between saying the message on them was right in private and disowning them in public (whose being a politician now?) and then attack anyone who doesn’t join in your damage limitation cause.
Clearly Smokey thinks the “mistake in judgement” was about the effectiveness of the campaign. He thinks they should hide their real opinions (that he shares) because they didn’t work, not because they were wrong. I think there’s a word for that…
“Smokey says that heartland “made a mistake in judgement” but then claims: “I personally saw nothing wrong with equating believers in the runaway global warming scare with the Unabomber”
If Smokey doesn’t see anything wrong with what Heartland did, what does he mean by a “mistake in judgement”?”
It seems if Smokey was making a decision for heartland, he would regarded a mistake for the organization to make that kind of decision.
It’s not the same, but similar to being “politically correct”.
Whereas if Smokey was not representing a institute, he would regarded as proper to make the correct connection between similar nihilist beliefs of Unabomber and those with CAGW beliefs.
The disagreement that CAGWers would have had with Ted Kaczynski was his choice of targets. CAGWers would find ELF’s choice of targets as better selection than what Unabomber chose. But would be even more sympathy if the attacks directed a big oil or coal powerplants.
All the above idiots would agree that much fewer humans and more people living in mud huts would much better future. They share an irrationality uncommon for most people [including those living in mud huts].
gbaike – I would not “find ELF’s choice of targets as better selection than what Unabomber chose”. I would not “be even more sympathy if the attacks directed a big oil or coal powerplants”. I do not “agree that much fewer humans and more people living in mud huts would much better future”. Who here is the one being irrational?
OK, Louise. Tell us how you feel about Greenpeace targeting Japanese whaling ships, the ELF targeting researchers, and violence from the left in general. Do you support OWS, for example?
jim2 – I do not support violence in any way shape or form. If protesters want to get in the way of Japanese whaling ships by risking their own lives then that’s up to them. If they do so in a way that puts others’ lives at risk (including those potentially rescuing them) then they should be stopped – by force if necessary.
I think ELF targetting researchers should be locked up and everything to prevent their action should be done – similar to how we treat Al QQaida because that’s just what they are – terrorists.
I don’t know what OWS is
OWS = Occupy Wall Street. They interfere with law-abiding citizens getting to work. They interfere with business owners right to conduct business because they drive off patrons. They defecate on police cars, use illegal drugs in pubic, and many rapes have been reported from their “camps.”
Are you for any of that?
I just realised that you said and I responded ELF – I don’t know what this is either, I read Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and confirm that I think that anyone who targets violence at researchers should be treated like terrorists because that’s what they are.
I also looked up OWS as I am in UK and it is not a familiar acronym. I think everyone has the right to protest about anything they feel strongly about but nobody has the right to disrupt others’ going about their lawful business.
Am I a left wing greenie (watermelon)?
jim2 – you posted your description of OWS as I was composing my reply. No I am not for defecating on police cars, rape, using illegal drugs in public (or private) or any of the other things you stated. I am for everyone having the right to protest peacefully in public but they should not be allowed to break the law or disrupt others’ lives.
What other outrageous things do you want to ask me if I support so that I can explain to you that I am just like you. A right wing voting law abiding terrorist hating member of the public?
Louise | May 28, 2012 at 10:14 am |
You don’t sound like a watermelon to me. Simply believing in AWG or CAWG doesn’t make one a watermelon in my eyes. My next question would be what measures you propose to head off global warming.
“gbaike – I would not “find ELF’s choice of targets as better selection than what Unabomber chose”. I would not “be even more sympathy if the attacks directed a big oil or coal powerplants”. I do not “agree that much fewer humans and more people living in mud huts would much better future”. Who here is the one being irrational?”
Well, it seems to me, that generally speaking, ELF and wannabee Unabombers have little reason to be at Judith’s site. Nor do the Realclimate twits.
But if looking list of what I regard as irrational. To start:
If want CO2 levels lower because higher levels of CO2 will, in your opinion, cause CAGW. Which would mean anything more than say million deaths, extinction of animals, and insufferable and unpleasant conditions. Then seems one should strongly favor more nuclear power
plants. As a first and immediate step.
And the bigger the danger the faster and more nuclear plant you want. As additional bonus the more energy available translates into being able to have more capability of doing anything.
A problem arises if not you are uncertain about any future CAGW effects.
And also if don’t much know much about nuclear power.
If so, seems to me, that you have responsibility to getting more knowledge.
Most people if they have cancer, and are vaguely intelligence, quickly learn as much or more about their cancer than their doctor does.
And if one actually believe there is enormous threat, one should move mountains. That would be rational.
gbaikie and jim2 – I favour building as many nuclear power plants as possible as quickly as possible.
Here in the UK our nuclear power building plans have recently been disrupted by the private companies changing their minds about building them because it is now too expensive because Germany has cancelled its programme. In this instance, I am in favour of our government using my money to support the building of these plants. I’m certainly more in favour of them using my money in this way compared to supporting the bankers or bailing out failing EU countries.
I think that is a great idea Louise. I just wish the watermelons in power in the US didn’t kow tow to the environmental groups. Maybe we need to start a pro-nuclear power group.
jim2 – we seem to be coming to some sort of agreement. Along the way you seemed to want to drag OWS, ALF, Japanese whaling protests and all sorts of other stuff into the discussion – why? There are very many of us who recognise the science behind AGW (and GM, nuclear power, vaccination, etc) who are also supportive of a capitalist, with some elements of socialist, view point.
I have been on the receiving end of a load of bile on this blog that melts away when anyone actually asks my views and listens to what I say. It appears that anyone who thinks the Tea Party is a far right organisation (and I do) and also thinks AGW is a problem is automatically labelled a commie watermelon (Bruce even told me to “cheer yourself up, go abort someone”).
There are a whole range of political views and a whole range of views about science. They don’t always line up.
Louise – I am of the opinion that more CO2 will TEND to have a warming effect. What isn’t clear is if feedbacks will amplify or damp the change in temperature. That’s the crux of the issue in my opinion. I suppose this would make me a luke warmer in a sense. But, again, it’s the feedbacks that matter. Other than possibly the feedbacks, it does appear we agree.
jim2 – if we now agree that our views are not too dissimilar, why did you cross examine me on my political views which have nothing to do with my views on the science of AGW? I really do not think I am unusual. Very many of us that accept AGW is an issue that should be dealt with are not commie/leftie/watermelons yet that is the initial assumption from many of those that do not think AGW is an issue. Why is this?
Anyone else feel free to chip in here if you know the answer (BTW, hunter accused me of lying as he couldn’t believe that my political views and view of the science of AGW are as I have stated).
You asked if I thought you a watermelon, so I asked a few questions to help me decide. You certainly don’t appear to be one, but you do seem upset that I asked the questions.
Louise, it’s just a stereotype, but there’s also something to it. People get emotional about AGW.
You seemed to make a number of assumptions before I asked whether you thought I was a watermelon. Look back, you asked about OCW, ALF [ELF] Japanese whaling. You asked if I supported rape and taking illegal drugs in public. All before I asked if you thought I was a watermelon. Are these usual dinner party questions in your house?
There are plenty of posters on this blog that assume that anyone who is concerned about AGW must be a commie/leftie/facist/nazi. Just look at most of Wagathon’s posts of cwon or Chad Wozniak or hunter or gbaikie or Smokey. The list goes on. I’m glad that you are not one of these jim2.
I was asking, not accusing; nor was I assuming – that’s why I had to ask. Had I assumed any of that, I wouldn’t have felt the need to ask.
‘lolwat’ is putting a dishonest spin on my comment. Let me be crystal clear: I saw nothing wrong with Heartland’s billboard. And I have never flip-flopped; from the very beginning I defended it, and I have defended it repeatedly.
‘lolwat’ seems to have missed my disclaimer above: “…[even if that]…”. Critics of Heartland are fortunate that I was not the one in charge of putting up the billboards, because I would have labeled them for exactly what they are: apologists for, and enablers of mass starvation of the world’s poorest:
One-third of the world’s population subsists on less than $2 a day. With the eco-promotion of “green” fuel by overfed Americans and Europeans, global food prices have shot up, causing food riots in Mexico, Egypt and other poor countries.
People were understandably angry that the cost of basic grains are escalating fast, due directly to the “green” demand for ethanol. Today more than half the US corn crop goes into ethanol production, with its concomitant waste of fossil fuel energy, and excessive depletion of fresh water supplies. That lunacy must be laid directly at the feet of the supporters of ‘environmentalsim’, which has now morphed into a famine-producing religious cult. Science has nothing to do with it any more. As Ottmar Edenhofer, the UN/IPCC’s Co-Chair of WG-3, recently explained it:
“One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.”
There you have it, right from the horse’s mouth: Environmental policy and climate policy are cover stories — illusions — for the environmental movement’s useful tools. Science is just a thin veneer over the real, underlying purpose: UN kleptocracy.
But as Edenhofer candidly admitted, the true purpose is confiscation and redistribution of the West’s wealth. The fact that mass starvation in poor countries is one of the side effects of the enviro-ruse does not matter a whit to Edenhofer, or to the UN/IPCC, or to ‘lolwat’. If people must starve to promote enviro-totalitarianism, so what? It’s just a means to an end, and the UN’s apologists and enablers applaud the steps taken, even if only in private. Because to admit supporting policies that cause starvation makes them no different than Ted Kazynski, who only murdered six people while advocating the mass slaughter of humanity.
That’s why ‘lolwat’ is lucky I am not producing Heartland’s billboards. Because I would show in no uncertain terms exactly what Kazynski’s clones are advocating.
Ah the infamous climate skeptic distortion of Ottmar Edenhofer’s interview. Given such tactics I wonder perhaps if your appeal to the “world’s poorest” is also a ploy. Do you really care or are you using using the world’s poor as a convenient argument?
Here’s the Edenhofer interview in full, not just the part you’ve quote-mined:
http://thegwpf.org/the-climate-record/1877-ipcc-official-climate-policy-is-redistributing-the-worlds-wealth.html
It’s clear from the interview that Edenhofer is saying redistribution of wealth is a side effect of reducing carbon emissions, not the reason for doing it. Plain as day.
So how come you, the GWPF, WUWT, prison planet, and many other climate skeptic “outlets” all over the internet manage to get it completely backwards? I refuse to accept all of you guys are incapable of reading the clear meaning of that speech.
I guess the quote was just too good not to be quote-mined. Perhaps a few of you read the interview, noticed your “interpretation” didn’t fit but thought “hey why waste a good quote”?
I would say to anyone sitting on the fence who doesn’t know whether climate skeptics can be trusted, go read Edenhofer’s interview and compare it to how skeptics portray it. It’s one of the clearest examples that climate skeptics are engaging in distorting the truth for propaganda.
“It’s clear from the interview that Edenhofer is saying redistribution of wealth is a side effect of reducing carbon emissions, not the reason for doing it. Plain as day.”
It doesn’t really matter how plain as day or clear it is. The redistribution of wealth is undesirable, unwanted, and not necessary. It shouldn’t happen, side-effect or otherwise.
“It doesn’t really matter how plain as day or clear it is. The redistribution of wealth is undesirable, unwanted, and not necessary.”
And Edenhofer doesn’t put it across as desirable, but as a complication with getting climate policy.
I just noticed something when reading over it again. I can understand words being removed from the start and end of a quote, but Smokey’s extract omits a couple of inconvenient words in the middle. The full quote from the interview is:
“one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore”
But Smokey’s version is:
“One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.”
The inconvenient part “Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this.” has been removed….
“It’s clear from the interview that Edenhofer is saying redistribution of wealth is a side effect of reducing carbon emissions, not the reason for doing it. Plain as day.”
The lie of the century. Plain as day.
Smokey,
Let me explain the reason I think the HI billboard was a positive experience for the effective exposure of CAGW advocating alarmist scientists who are working on the government’s dime.
HI is passing on a brilliant suggestion that is simply this, “Should you be alarmed at irrational science used by IPCC centric CAGW alarmists?”
My answer to their suggestion is, “Very.”
I think the billboard stresses well the importance of looking much more closely at the IPCC centric CAGW alarmists wherever they are; not just in science but in gov’t, academia, media and NGOs.
In that regard, I do not think HI strategically erred.
John
Bast’s point (f). Give it your Bast shot. On your own, count me out. It’s not that kind of battle and if you fight that way you will be the loser.
Bast’s point (g). Who did you think to influence? Did you do any test studies beforehand? Did you do any analysis afterward? Can you point to any evidence at all that the billboard influenced anyone positively who was not already on side?
I think it likely that the billboard has caused a lot of people to think about the extreme ideology underlying the Green movement. Much of the nagative reaction is from people in the movement who feel that they do not share that ideology, so they resent the suggestion. Sometimes you have to shock people to get them to think deeply about what they are doing.
Funny thing, haven’t heard of any defections from Greenpeace etc because of this, just people bailing from HI.
Hmmmmm.
I am really interested in “the extreme ideology underlying the Green movement”.
Does it exist to any significant degree? I wonder if it isn’t just a big fat strawman. After-all where are the posters representing this extreme Green movement? Not one of the commenters on this blog fits that description.
I see plenty of extremism from the other side (*cough* tucci) on many blogs. I wonder if this whole “extreme ideology” thingy isn’t just projection?
I wonder if the idea of an extreme green ideology is perhaps a fabricated bogeyman made up by the climate skeptics so they can attack a strawman and support their conspiracy theories rather than address the actual science.
I wonder if perhaps the vast majority of people who advocate action on climate aren’t even greens. I am not for example.
I vote Conservative, I support nuclear power, I support GM foods, I support vaccination programmes and I also support minimising the amount of fossil fuels that we burn to help reduce the impact of AGW.
Extreme Green? By whose definition?
Extreme is in the eye of the beholder, lolwot. So someone who considers themself a moderate when compared to say, the MSM, would look like an extreme lefty when viewed from slightly right of center.
lolwot – (BTW, I like the alias. It reminds me of a cartoon where one is the target of a practical joke, is laughing along with everyone else, then suddenly “gets it” and says, “Wot?”)
Anyway, when it comes to people, they aren’t very often 100% this or that. You say you are not a “green.” So, does that mean you are for burning coal in conventional, older coal plants? Does that mean you are not for government subsidies for solar and wind power?
You define yourself mostly by what you do. Since we don’t see what you do, we have to go more on what you say. So … what say you?
I think that burning all the fossil fuels as fast as we can just because they are the cheapest most convenient option is a short-sighted mistake. That has nothing to do with any sort of “Green ideology”. It’s a strategic decision.
Burning the cheapest fossil fuels as we need to while we build nuclear power plants, small and large, is the right thing to do.
Michael – Maybe you didn’t get the memo. Or, more likely, the MSM didn’t report it.
Put it this way, if you were running a campaign for pres, you might target your ads to your base, to the undecided, or to the other side’s base. Assuming the billboard wasn’t targeted to Heartland’s base, to have an effective ad, you must have some idea of what appeals to the other side. This billboard shows that Heartland doesn’t have a clue (we already knew the climate activists don’t have a clue). Getting major news coverage by giving the other side an opportunity to show that skeptics are kooks and crazies sounds like an own goal to me. Shocker indeed.
kim2ooo | May 28, 2012 at 3:21 am |
http://climaterealistponderings.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/as-promised/#comment-121
Interesting.
More deception from the *brave men and women* doing their bit to try to save the world.
Obviously they should be [in glorious and just world] showered with peace prizes.
looks like catholics are extreme green ideologists
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1104646.htm
“I hope that all members of the international community can agree on a responsible, credible and supportive response to this worrisome and complex phenomenon, keeping in mind the needs of the poorest populations and of future generations,” the pope said.”
Such statements doesn’t indicate the Pope is green ideologist nor extreme green.
Perhaps the writer of article, who one would think is a catholic, fits this description.
Faith in one religion, doesn’t seem to stop members from having various religious beliefs.
But I do tend to support the idea that generally people who have a faith, tend not to have such strong need for other religions. One could say they have certain amount of an immunity, but they can still get sick.
And this idea seems it’s somewhat proven, as totalitarians always target established religions- because they are source of resistance to the new State religion.
lolwot | May 28, 2012 at 8:04 am | Reply
looks like catholics are extreme green ideologists
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1104646.htm
——————
No, Catholics have ALWAYS been called to be “Good Stewards”.
Has nothing to do with the belief in CAGW.
Yes in general the churches have indeed largely swallowed the alarmist dogma along with their own. Similar mindset.
If you’ve ever read Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals,” you know Alinsky used the Catholic church to achieve his goals. Today, we would say the CC was “punked.”
:)
Kim200, Punksta, Jim2, and others … rather than laboring to spin and quibble the sobering moral, spiritual, and scientific challenges of climate change, isn’t it a whole lot simpler and more honest to take at face value Pope Benedict’s own plain words?
Now, it is true that Pope Benedict, in his 2010 address “If You Want To Cultivate Peace, Protect Creation”, takes care that his message not “enter into the merit of specific technical solutions.” And the reason for this restriction is that the Pope Benedict’s authority is moral and spiritual, not scientific.
Pope Benedict thereby (and wisely) opened a door to science in 2010, through which James Hansen and his colleagues have eagerly entered in 2011, via their article “Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature” (arXiv:1110.1365v3). Note that this article carefully includes among its authors affiliations the National Religious Coalition on Creation Care. And of course, the report of the Pontifical Academy on climate change is a further advance toward the union of good morality, good spirituality, and good science.
Conclusion I It is good news that James Hansen and Pope Benedict are vigorously building strengthening bridges between vigorous morality, vigorous spirituality, and vigorous science. In particular, if it happens that Hansen’s scientific predictions are fulfilled in the coming decade, then the door will be open for the Catholic Church to speak with its full moral and spiritual authority.
Conclusion II It is food for thought that Joe Bast/Heartland and Anthony Watts/WUWT can find no better topics for their recent essays, than the twisted essays of psychopathic killers like Ted Kaczynski, Anders Breivik, and Charles Mansen. At the end of the day, whose purposes are Heartland/WUWT thereby serving? Both Heartland and WUWT would serve the public far better, if they quoted the wise words of Pope Benedict more often, and the twisted rantings of psychopathic killers less often.
So you admit what you said up thread [ Which I challenged ] was spin.
The Pope has not endorsed the paper NOR has the “entire” Pontifical Academy of Science.
You need to reread what you wrote here…and stop spinning.
The Pope was responding to this Question:
[“In the recently published book , Light of the World: The Pope, The Church, and the Signs of the Times, author Peter Seewald asks the Holy Father that in the absence of a comprehensive international agreement from last year’s climate change summit in Copenhagen, Doesn’t this outcome necessarily confirm that mankind is altogether incapable of ever resolving a threat such as climate change in a collective effort?”]
http://edmundriceinternational.org/jpic/?p=471
Clearly, the question is of politics and The Pope is addressing THE STATE OF POLITICS. He [ The Pope ] is rightfully concerned.
“all members of the international community might reach agreement on a responsible, credible response,” …..The key word is “credible’
http://www.radiovaticana.org/EN1/Articolo.asp?c=541410
To allow for a “credible” response…. One must first have “credible” evidence.
The evidence is in question, the players are in question, the solutions offered are in question.
Your paper by Mr Hansen…. http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/notyet/submitted_Hansen_etal.pdf
Is nothing more than opinion. Even the link title says “not yet submitted”. Is this why you’ve never provided the direct link? But refer to it as such: “Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature” (arXiv:1110.1365v3)”…This is disturbing as you seem able to provide other links.
Lol….. A fan of fictional history? While I disagreed with Anthony’s position, he was very critical of HI’s billboard.
Why do you guys feel the need to fabricate things?
Personally, I think the parallels should be demonstrated. http://suyts.wordpress.com/2012/05/24/these-animals-are-committing-crimes-against-humanity/
“It appears that anyone who thinks the Tea Party is a far right organisation (and I do) and also thinks AGW is a problem is automatically labelled a commie watermelon.”
In your opinion why is Tea Party a far right organization?
In terms of far right, where does Libertarianism fit?
“Political scholars such as Noam Chomsky assert that in most countries the terms “libertarian” and “libertarianism” are synonymous with left anarchism. It is only in the United States that the term libertarian is commonly associated with those who have conservative positions on economic issues and liberal positions on social issues, going by the common meanings of “conservative” and “liberal” in the United States.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism
And why is AGW a problem.
Who or what does affect most.
And as reality check, what is most significant affect has it had to this point
in time?
I don’t really care much about others’ political views, I don’t use labels such as libertarian in my day to day communications, it’s not a word we use in the UK very much.
This blog is called Climate, etc and I questioned why folks were making assumptions about my political views, other than that, I don’t wish to discuss politics.
There may not be huge significant effects of AGW to date and that’s probably why many folk are happy to ignore it. It does not mean that there will not be severe impacts of AGW in the future if we do nothing to curb CO2 emissions now.
“There may not be huge significant effects of AGW to date and that’s probably why many folk are happy to ignore it. It does not mean that there will not be severe impacts of AGW in the future if we do nothing to curb CO2 emissions now.”
Ok, but China is largest emitter of CO2. It seems it would be nice if China would first limited it’s massive pollution. Wouldn’t that be a higher priority? Assuming it was a choice of one or the other?
And next China wasting some huge amount energy, which meaning it’s emitting more CO2 than if it had more efficient energy use.
“China is on track to meet a goal of reducing national energy intensity by 20% by 2010. This target, set in 2005, is the cornerstone of a set of policies to cut energy and emissions growth.”
http://www.chinafaqs.org/library/chinafaqs-intense-push-energy-efficiency
And apparently made 15% by 2011:
“However, its CO2 emissions per unit of GDP, or its carbon intensity, fell by 15 percent between 2005 and 2011, the IEA said, suggesting the world’s second-largest economy was finding less carbon-consuming ways to fuel growth.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=china-to-spend-27-billion-on-emissi
so something 1.5 billion tonnes less per year by being more efficient.
So how does Europe emit?
EU about 4 and UK 1/2 billion.
Hmm, perhaps they have already mostly handled the biggest part of that.
But continuing that and reducing pollutions seems to be highest priority.
Anyhow, it seems to me, that China is going to run out of coal, and
it’s probably going gain enough wealth and time that it could afford getting the point building enough nuclear reactors to replace the coal powerplants.
It might make sense if one could somehow get china to start building nuclear reactor sooner.
From US prospective, it seems easier [on so many levels] to simply make nuclear powerplants in the US, particularly in areas where coal is current used, and it’s least efficient [such needing coal to be shiped over long distance].
So more could done in terms getting nuclear energy used, and we are
reducing CO2 emission [though may be largely due to slower economic growth- which I think don’t is worth it- and worst results than it already has had.].
Speaking of ghostwriters for people who can neither think nor write, the big question on everyone’s lips is : Who the f*** is “Bart R” ?
Anyone have any idea ?
I do.
I now pronounce you Erica and blueice2hotsea. You may now .. whatever.
http://judithcurry.com/2010/11/12/the-denizens-of-climate-etc/
Though I don’t ghostwrite, regardless of who asks. Some of us have ethical standards.
Say, Erica. @ 1.38 am (?) Things are likely to get deep again, with yr existentialist question, ‘Who is Bart?’ or ‘Who am I? leading to more questions of the kind, …’What am I?’ … jest sayin’
Thought for today, ‘Be prepared.’
Sorry Beth
As you hadn’t posted a ‘thought for today’ for a little while the franchise has been reallocated in a frenzied bidding war. You can appeal against the decision of course. Or perhaps you might like to bid for the existentialist franchise? Should it exist. Either way you have friends right at the top of the respective comittees.
I am off to the Devon records office in a bit to go through their various 13th and 14th century records to try to pin down the transistion from the MWP to the LIA.
They have documentation also of nearby Plymouth docks who have records of types of fish caught, dating to around 1320. Fish types change according to water temperature as you know. This directly relates to something I came across from the WWF who stated;
“Off the coast of south-west Britain, entire marine communities have shifted north by as much as 120 miles during periods of ocean warming over the last 70 years, and pilchard, the dominant fish in warm years, is less valuable for fishermen than the herring that they catch in cooler years.”
http://www.wwf.org.uk/filelibrary/pdf/int_hotfish_ma.pdf
The WWF obviously don’t know that the Pilchard was very prevalent off South Devon throughout the 13th/14th centuries. The PiIchard Inn at Burgh Island dates to1336 and we have various Pilchard Points where observers watched for the shoals to come in close to the land. Wonder why WWF and the IPCC never seem to want to put modern day events into a wider historic context?
tonyb
@tony b
‘Wonder why WWF and the IPCC never seem to want to put modern day events into a wider historic context?’
Assuming that your remark wasn’t entirely rhetorical, I could speculate that the would not wish to discover that today’s weather and climate events aren’t ‘unprecedented’. For if they have happened before without the world coming to an end, humanity being wiped out and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse riding down the High Street, then it might cross Joe Public’s mind that such events could be survived this time around too.
And that would be a most unwelcome thought that would directly affect WWF and Greenpeace and all the other shroud-waving activist organisations in the wallet..and in their influence. Which they would not like at all.
…or maybe because they understand that what might not have been much of an issue for a ‘society’ that consisted of people living in caves banging rocks together, might be altogether more discomforting for one that is tightly bound to highly efficient and predictable resource extraction.
Well, Tony, I wonder who benefits from the franchise sale? Inventers so often get ripped off.
Re migrating fish: A crises of existentialism … WWF adrift w/out context, not jest ‘Who am I?’ but ‘Where am i?’ Don’t know how the fish are reacting.
Beth
I am pleased to say the committee have reviewed their (in my opinion short sighted) decision and reallocated the thought for the day franchise to you. As long as you realise that the money from the resale was going towards the political wing of the WWF and as a result polar bears will be disenfranched. But if you can live with that….
Bearing (hah!) in mind that AGW is supposed to be about the physics I do wonder why the IPCC (and WWF et al) spend so much time in trying to prove todays climate is unprecedented but fail to provide the full context to understand it
tonyb
Latimer said in reply to my comment
‘Wonder why WWF and the IPCC never seem to want to put modern day events into a wider historic context?’
Assuming that your remark wasn’t entirely rhetorical….
—- —–
No it wa a serious point which I amplified above when I was able to give Beth her good news.
Historical climatology is unfashionable these days and its decline over the last 20 years is mirrored by the popularity of computer models. I doubt if that is a coincidence, because as I have remrked before if it doesnt exist in a digotal format it doesnt seem to exist at all (for some researchers) .
Not only is context important to understand that what has happened to day has probably happened before (and sometimes isn’t even particularly unusual) but also that historical material used has to be seen in the context of the time and subsequent ‘reinterpretation.’ For example, modellers parse SST’s to fractions of a degree without reference to how these were obtained-as I wrote at great length in my article on buckets.
Vague and unreliable information thereby gets translated to’ scientifci’ data that is then being used to dictate Govt policy. How many politicians know of the manipulation of dubious information in order to turn it into scientific data?
tonyb
A line from some shmaltzy film comes to mind, Tony. Why do the IpCc and the WWF………….? “The heart has its reasons.”
These organizations are made up of men and women. If you prick us, do we not bleed? If we have a MISSION, must we not , er, well, adjust the evidence for the higher good?
As this is the most recent thread pointed to by searching for Gleick, I choose to include the link here:
http://www.pacinst.org/press_center/press_releases/statement6612.html
It might fit better in an even earlier thread specifically about why Gleick chose Heartland. History may later suggest that Heartland damage > Gleick damage. If so, well, there is your “why?”
This thread is about costs and benefits of the Heartland billboard, which was not necessarily linked to the events of February.
lolwot,
Shall we take up discussion of the HI billboards again here instead being OT at http://judithcurry.com/2012/10/13/week-in-review-101312/#comment-257628 ?
John
n
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