This is from MTR 1377 radio today. Our regular feature, “Quote of the Week” just doesn’t work here. Neither does decade or century. No, a whole new category all by itself is reserved for this quote from the newly appointed Climate Commissioner of Australia, Tim Flannery, noted zoologist and author of the book The Weather Makers.
Here it is, brace yourself:
If we cut emissions today, global temperatures are not likely to drop for about a thousand years.
Lest you think that is an errant remark out of context, here’s the follow up from Flannery:
Just let me finish and say this. If the world as a whole cut all emissions tomorrow the average temperature of the planet is not going to drop in several hundred years, perhaps as much as a thousand years because the system is overburdened with CO2 that has to be absorbed and that only happens slowly.
Crikey! So much for the “think of the grandchildren” argument used by Dr. James Hansen.
Read the entire transcript and listen to the audio here
h/t to Lawrie Ayres and Scarlet Pumpernickel
What Flannery didn’t say was that not only would it take up to 1000 years for temperatures to start dropping, but that temperatures will continue to rise for up to 50 years even if we were to stop emitting CO2 tomorrow.
He’s certainly made Australia’s government’s job to sell a carbon dioxide tax to Australians a tougher one. Assuming of course Flannery’s words are repeated publicly and often!
Somebody answer this humble question:
What is it about the English speaking world that captures our imagination about man-made CO2 destroying the world. It isn’t happening according to script – but the play goes on in Britain, USA (less so probably because we never seem to “get it” anyway), Canada, and most acutely, Australia? Why are we so irrational.
Man-made CO2 seems to be accounting for just about nothing. No sea level rise. No increased storm activity. No unprecedented warming. No crises. No crises at all. All crises in fact, being as a result of poor political leadership.
Are we collectively mad?
Ya mean if we only cut 20% it will take 5,000 years?
I am just waiting for the fox to finally eat “that” chicken little. I think he annoys me the most, but that may change tomorrow 😉
In my country, the USA, biologists are just that stupid because science is funded by the NSF, which has declared AGW real and settled and funds AGW every chance it gets.
Who/what funds European and Aussie science?
Maybe the question is slightly misphrased. It really should be something like: What will be the effect on future temperatures if this tax is implemented? Flannery (and others) seem to think that Bolt is asking how much temperatures will fall from their current levels if Australia implements the tax.
“We can accurately predict the climate for the next 1000 years. If we are wrong, it’s because the effect of CAGW is worse than we
imaginedmodeled.”What a scam.
It should serve to show the masses just how fanatical the fanaticism has become. But probably won’t.
It is a long standing tradition in english speaking culture, going back to the Salem witch trials and beyond, where there is an inherent refusal to accept the idea that the world is capricious, random, and that nature is simply *natural* without persona. Nature, the untamed wilderness, is metaphorically a representation of the wild subconcious Id of the human psyche, what puritans saw as our Original Sin. It was the fault of man that Earth was not a Paradise, but instead was a barren wilderness that required man to labor to tame it in order to eke a living from the earth.
Any wilderness that was not tamed but was dark and bountiful with life was the den of the serpent, satan, which sought to tempt man’s baser desires to sin through pride, gluttony, sloth, lust, etc. When Earth failed to remain tamed, it was seen to be the fault of satanic influences, usually brought about by whoever seemed to be benefitting in spite of calamity. When blight, or frost, or flood, or storm destroyed crops, those who did not lose crops were seen as using witchcraft to benefit themselves at others expense.
The modern AGW movement is thus inherently influenced by these puritanical christian archetypes. Warming has to be happening because western capitalism is evil (even though it has complied with environmental regulations in the West and our environment is the cleanest it has been since the era of colonization) and the fat cats make a profit when the rest of the world is going to heck, so clearly they have to be doing evil to someone in order to earn that profit.
If you guys only knew how hard it’s been infiltrating denier agents into the top ranks of the AGW Team in order to discredit it from the inside with inane and ludicrous comments. Well done, Tim! Let’s all hear it for our Climate Commissioner!
Tony,
If we cease injecting soft drinks with CO2 will this help sweet Gaia? What about Pop Rocks? I love that candy.
Will it harm the environment if my eleven year old daughter makes a NaHCO3/vinegar volcano for her science project assignment?
Thanks for caring.
Your good friend in Charlotte,
-Lee
I don’t watch much television, and I tell people that there is enough strange stuff going on in my brain that I am fully entertained most of the time. But that pales in comparison to what must be going on in Flannery’s mind.
I spoke at the rally of 4,000 people in Canberra on Wednesday, and got a fabulous introduction from Angry Anderson.
But, I thought the planet has already started to cool? As there has been no “statistical warming” since 1995.
In fact i believe “there has been a slight cooling trend since 2002”? Quoting from Phil Jones himself?
Maybe he should have a chat with this Flannery fellow and put him in the picture as there definately seems to be a breakdown in information on this subject, in fact while he’s at it he should have a chat with our Osborne fellow too as there really seems little point in the UK’s enthusiasm for Green taxes now also.
GregO
Answering your humble question – I learnt some years back from friends in the ALP (Australian Labor Party) that this CO2 issue had nothing to do with mitigating the earth’s temperature but is all about “compelling ” us to live more sustainably, whatever that means. In this sense there is nothing irrational about it – it is simply the means by which the progressives are implementing their goal – essentially the destruction of the capitalist west, the link being that being industrious is synonymous with CO2 emissions.
You could view it as a tax on human productivity – the more effort we make, whether personally by physical exertion or by proxy when we use machines powered by hydrocarbons, the more tax we pay. It’s not taxing the air we breathe but taxing physical effort.
But it was never about the science – the progressives have simply prostituted science for their political goal, and it’s not a recent modern thing either, for the same group did during the early 19th century in England with geology.
I just set my hair on fire with the insanity!
Let’s go balls to the wall and DOUBLE emissions, just to spite the people 2000 years off! Take that, progeny!
The thing is, that the “world temperature” (whatever that is), has now been statistically “fudged” upward just about as far as it can be without being totally blatant (well it is pretty blatant already).
They HAVE to do this tax in Australia now, before the real facts become TOTALLY obvious to even the most ‘blind” of the warmists.
David Archibald says:
March 24, 2011 at 9:51 pm
I don’t watch much television, and I tell people that there is enough strange stuff going on in my brain that I am fully entertained most of the time. But that pales in comparison to what must be going on in Flannery’s mind.
I spoke at the rally of 4,000 people in Canberra on Wednesday, and got a fabulous introduction from Angry Anderson.
=========================================================
4000 people now, yesterday it was only 3000. Like those fishing stories, it just keeps getting bigger every time.
Angry Anderson thought you were his long lost twin brother.
I didn’t see you on TV David , what fancy dress outfit were you wearing?
The 3rd Reich was suposed to last a thousand years as well.
A quick correction please. It’s MTR 1377
Also, this will be timely to remind people of Bolts interview of the EU Climate Commissar Jill Duggan who was asked the same question.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/dont_know_the_cost_dont_know_if_it_works/
Don’t know the cost, don’t know what it will achieve. don’t know when it will achieve but trust us, we can change our climate by imposing taxes on you.
How stoooopid have we become? How ignorant, how gullible, how benign have we become as a society, to allow this sort of a scam to be perpetuated on us?
Is he apply, that the current warming we had, is by something happened 1000 years ago?
“The modern AGW movement is thus inherently influenced by these puritanical christian archetypes…”
I would hasten to point out, the writer of this claim probably knows LITTLE about Christianity, and even LESS about the Puritains. The term “Puritain” comes from the desire to “purify” the Anglican Church of it’s Roman Catholic influences.
I would sum this up in the comment: “Your lack of understanding of the terms you use…does not help add to any validity in your use of the language.”
To show that one does not need to resort to such distortions, but that the Enviromental movement CAN be described as a “neo-religion”, I recommend Michael Chrition’s 2004 Speech to the Commonwealth Club of San Fransisco.
Max
Ah, but long before then we all have to front up to explain to a very angry lady:
“I think that, within this century, the concept of the strong Gaia will actually become physically manifest.” – Prof. Tim Flannery on ABC Radio, 1 Jan 2011.
jonjermey at 9:47 p.m.
LOL!
Someone gave me one of Flannery’s books and I found it literally unreadable.
When I start to disagree with obvious errors of fact and logic in a book I start to make notes in the margins. If it gets hopelessly wrong, I write copiously in the margins, arguments in support of alternative positions. If it reaches the point where I start yelling at the book, it is time to put it down. Flannery is so broadly uninformed about the issues he purports to lecture us about the yelling comes long before half-way.
Utter, total, senseless, unscientific rubbish, page after page of sub-astrological wisdom and prognostications. I see from the quote that things have not changed one bit with passage of time and the copious gathering of lucre. You’d think by now he could afford a computer and an internet connection.
Australia, you are truly lost.
There is room for the wise among you in Canada, however. It’s getting colder; bring mittens.
Here here GregO…!!
We have gone a bit mad (humans, collectively), or as a minimum, are often silly enough to just follow the media mantra like so many “sheeple”.
Flannery, in a single interview, has unravelled a lot of Govt/media rhetoric and admitted that man made CO2 (and its reduction) has an almost negligable affect on global warming. By implication, you would also summise that man’s addition of CO2 to earth’s atmosphere, and therefore its impact on Global Warming, is also: negligable.
Alleluiah!! and from their own “pin up” boy.
Congrats to MTR 1377 and the true believers for helping to open our eyes and focus the debate on what really is damaging this planet and humanity. i.e, overpopulation, deforrestation, incorrect land use etc etc.
I think the following syllogism applies:
All extremists are nutters.
All CAGW alarmists are extremists.
Therefore, all CAGW alarmists are nutters.
The climate nutter crown for this week should go to Romm who probably deserves the perpetual crown of climate nutterdom. Nobody tries harder. Except maybe Tamino. Perhaps there should be a collector’s edition of Climate Nutter Bookends with the busts of both these clowned prats mounted thereon.
And speaking of busts, how long can it be before the first arrests and beshackling of the more egregious climate frauds? Don’t you just know they’re all fully lawyer’d up in anticipation.
But it is even better than that, as Flannery is speaking with authority, no less than that of Susan Solomon, Chief editor of AR4 WG1 2007, who with others in PNAS 2009 said the same:
That paper’s title is “Irreversible climate change due to carbon
dioxide emissions” and in the Abstract it states firmly “This paper shows that the climate change that
takes place due to increases in carbon dioxide concentration is
largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop.”
It gets worse: “Following
cessation of emissions, removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide
decreases radiative forcing, but is largely compensated by slower
loss of heat to the ocean, so that atmospheric temperatures do not
drop significantly for at least 1,000 years. Among illustrative
irreversible impacts that should be expected if atmospheric carbon
dioxide concentrations increase from current levels near 385 parts
per million by volume (ppmv) to a peak of 450–600 ppmv over the
coming century are irreversible dry-season rainfall reductions in
several regions comparable to those of the ‘‘dust bowl’’ era and
inexorable sea level rise.”
Yet in her own AR4 she frequently states herself that rising CO2 will INCREASE evaporation and thereby raise radiative forcing as well sumultaneously increasing rainfall, not reducing it. Truly, Solomon knows not of what she speaks, and that applies to the entire apparatus of the Natianal Academies of Science of the USA, and above all its President.
These people are so foolish that they brag about it. Their statements will mark them for what they are. [snip] pg
Andrew’s recent interviews with climate operatives who want to drive the earth, claim to see temperature variations over millenia with fractional degree precision, but are unable to say how many billions they will spend or even estimate within orders of magnitude what the result will be are perfect Saturday Night Live comedy material.
I wonder why the cold feet for the hot topic?
Who wants the global temperature to drop? Everyone I know (and the news media) are constantly complaining about the cold weather. Last thing we need is a drop in temperature!!!
Umm, can someone explain to me the big deal? My interpreation of the interview transcript with Bolt suggests Flannery was answering the question of how much a 5% cut in emissions by 2020 in Australia ALONE would affect world temperatures, to which his answer is surely correct. The 5% figure is a politcally tolerable figure in Australia, but wasnt seriously going to have any effect. I dont know why anyone would be surprised at this.
Look, I’m a long-time avid reader of WUWT and no friend of the AGW folks, but seriously, this quote has been slectively used and to present it this way does us now favours…….
What did “Gaia” ever do for me, anyway?
GregO says:
March 24, 2011 at 9:26 pm
Somebody answer this humble question:”
I’ve come to believe that there is a collective feeling of guilt for our success. We know we’re living “high on the hog” as we watch nightly news stories about thirld world countries. Now the venting of that guilt seems to be occurring by vilifying CO2 since it’s the common denominator to our economies. No other single entity is a direct result of our economic engine. And who’s venting that guilt most of all amongst us? Those that are living highest on the hog (the wealthy, movie stars, etc.).
To URKidding:
“The ABC as usual told lies about the rally, saying there were 2000 people there. I can judge crowds well based on how many fitted into my high school assembly hall (1000) and there were at least 4000.”
– Bob Vinnicombe
I always make a point of referring to him as Tim ‘Ghost Metropolis’ Flannery!
About a decade ago, I bought one of Flannery’s books (on Australian History, not Climate). Thankfully, a friend of mine borrowed it, and hasn’t given it back.
Perhaps he should read this from Science Daily, published yesterday.
“North Atlantic Oceanic Currents Play Greater Role in Absorption of Carbon Than Previously Thought”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110309132015.htm
Even if you are enough of an ecoloon to believe the cAGW nonsense, surely it must be absolutely clear to the meanest intelligence that we shouldn’t be spending trillions on bird choppers and other stuff that just doesn’t work.
If, despite the clear evidence that Flannery’s IQ score is smaller than his hat size, it could be shown that he is right and no “cooling” will occur for maybe a thousand years, then we’d be far better off investing in mitigation.
After all, sea defences, irrigation schemes and desalination plants can generate real jobs with tangible benefits.
I guess a project to build asylums where the poor benighted hyperthermalists could be looked after with kindness (and good air conditioning) might be a good idea, too.
Logically this means that our current warming was caused 1000 years ago and we are suffering (enjoying) it now
Richard Allcock @ 11.13
I think people are quite right to be surprised that Flannery said this. He is the CC Commissioner hired to sell the tax idea to Australians. He could not have said anything “worse” to make his job harder. The quote Anthony has given above is Flannery’s own summary in which he refers to the world cutting all emmissions ( not just the 5% for Australia). Andrew Bolt did not ask him to summarise or clarify
what he had said.
Sounds like a load of old flannery to me..
Even better, Prof Tim Flannery is scheduled to be conducting the first of his “Educational Seminars” to inform the Australian public about the extent of Carbon (Dioxide)’s contribution to AGW, and how the proposed “Carbon (sic) Tax” will reduce CO2 levels globally and save us (and the ploey bears) from being frozen/burnt/droughted/hurricaned to death tonight.
I certainly hope someone in the audience asks him about whether “no descernable effect for 1000 years” is a valid reason for imposing a huge new tax on everything immediately.
Why are we so irrational.
It is the rich feeling guilty for being rich (and yes ALL of us in the west are fantastically rich compared to 99.999% of all mankind before the year 1700 and the industrial era) and this is a form of self flagellation.
Richard Allcock – read it again. Andrew asks how much Australia alone will cut, Tim refuses to answer that one and instead offers up the suggestion that if the world cut their emissions the result won’t be seen for a thousand years.
Calculations have been made that if all Australian industry stopped tomorrow, the result would be something like 0.01 degrees. I’ve not seen anyone with carbon dioxide phobia dispute those calculations.
Imagine that you really believed CO2 emissions are going to be disastrous and stay disastrous for 1000 years. You see that you are losing ground politically (there are majorities in both the House and the Senate against the EPA regulating CO2) in the USA. China and India are huge producers of CO2 and adamantly refuse to constrain themselves because they don’t want to hurt their economies.
What would you do? Wouldn’t you have a backup strategy for dealing with the excessive amounts of CO2? Wouldn’t you be urgently investigating an alternative solution to this problem (eg: figuring out how to speed up the oceans’ consumption of CO2)? Would you put all your eggs in one broken, falling apart basket (reducing consumption of coal, oil, and NG) if the survival of the planet was at stake?
Obviously not, you would have a backup plan, you would attack the problem on multiple fronts. The fact that the alarmists’ sole strategy is to destroy our economies and completely rearrange our way of life tells me that global warming alarmism is more about a lefty political power trip than science.
One good indicator of how powerful the global warming alarmists are in a country is how much the country’s movers and shakers hate their own country. It is no surprise that the countries that colonized the world (or have other historical reasons for feeling guilty) are also the main proponents of global warming alarmism.
But here’s the contextual quote, posted by Anthony:
@richard Allcock: “Umm, can someone explain to me the big deal? My interpreation of the interview transcript with Bolt suggests Flannery was answering the question of how much a 5% cut in emissions by 2020 in Australia ALONE would affect world temperatures, to which his answer is surely correct.”
Actually Richard you should read the article. What he actually said according to Andrew Bolt was: “Later he concedes that even if the whole world slashes its emissions we won’t know what difference it will make for maybe a thousand years.”
I’ll listen to the audio when I get chance.
“
GregO
Can you name me a time and place anywhere on the planet since the beginning of “civilization” that mankind, en masse, has displayed anything other than delusional psychosis? Everything that has driven the success of humankind through the last few bottle necks (fewer than 10K at one point) has been as been due to Black Swans. Our health our comfort our population explosion are due to a handful of Unique individuals who made observations and then created applications to the REAL world for the benefit of the rest of us bumbling idiots. In proportion to the information readily available to all people and the superstition that still abounds, we are as delusional about simple explanations to reality as we ever have been.
Richard Allcock try reading the transcript before you respond next time.
Flannery was referring to the whole world, not just Australia.
Hmmm. Let me think. Who was the last guy with a thousand year plan? I believe there was a firm consensus in Germany at that time.
Richard Allcock says:
March 24, 2011 at 11:13 pm
Richard,
I believe the point Andrew Bolt was trying to make was, why tax Australians to hell, $300Billion, to get a result we may (never) see in a Thousand years time. That would be about 48 generations down the track. I’m sure my great, great grand children will ever see the result of today’s pain because of a tax, further, I doubt any decedents of mine will exist in a Thousand years time.
@Lady Life Grows – March 24, 2011 at 9:33 pm
“Who/what funds European and Aussie science?”
We – the people!
Tim should know. He is a mammalogist and an expert if dinosaur fossils.
But he probably is much more talented in these fields rather than a prophet.
Some of Tim’s Predictions
“The water problem is so severe for Adelaide that it may run out of water by early 2009.”
Current Adelaide dam levels – 84%
In June 2007, Flannery prophesied “Brisbane’s water supplies are so low they need desalinated water urgently, possibly in as little as 18 months”.
Current Brisbane dam levels – 87%.
(The $1.3 billion desalination plant at Tugun Queensland advocated by Flannery is now in mothballs):
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/tugun-desalination-plant-to-be-mothballed-20101205-18l30.html
In 2005, Flannery predicted Sydney’s dams could be dry in just two years.
Current Sydney dam levels – 72%
In 2004, Flannery said global warming would cause such droughts that “there is a fair chance Perth will be the 21st century’s first ghost metropolis”.
Perth to-day:
http://www.escapelocally.com.au/images/stories/perth-wa.jpg
(Although Perth dam levels are presently definitely low. Getting warm Tim.)
In 2008 he stated “This may be the Arctic’s first ice-free year”.
Sorry, Tim missed again. Even the Catlin Arctic Survey and the international conservation group WWF, believe that the Arctic will be ice free in the summer in about 20 years. I suspect even that may be wishful thinking. But the main question is why and what about the Southern Hemisphere?
What is Tim doing right now?
Tim is right at this moment in Adelaide as the Government’s Climate’s Commissioner preaching to the masses why a carbon tax is going to be good for us. I guess that this year we are stopping floods rather than droughts.
For the UK and OZ it’s a race to the bottom.
Trouble for the Ozzies is they don’t have help like us in the EU.
Ignoring all the failed predictions of a paleontologist, which are serial and serious (ht, KoCool above), not to mention his massively failed government funded geothermal project, why isn’t the government using a climate physicist, or one of climate related disciplines.
Its a bit like getting a proctologist to speak on heart conditions.
But I honestly can’t believe he got up on radio on day one and talked such rubbish.
As soon as they get pinged on numbers and results they start drowning.
Mike said:
“The modern AGW movement is thus inherently influenced by these puritanical christian archetypes…”
Max Hugoson says:
March 24, 2011 at 10:24 pm
“I would hasten to point out, the writer of this claim probably knows LITTLE about Christianity, and even LESS about the Puritains. The term “Puritain” comes from the desire to “purify” the Anglican Church of it’s Roman Catholic influences.”
Actually I was raised catholic, church and sunday school every weekend, altar boy for many years, and grew up in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, where puritans settled and their influence remains to this day in various places. That plus a good education in english and american literature, a lot of which was religious… yeah I know plenty, thanks.
To King of Cool..
Just a note of correction.
After the floods, the Brisbane Desal plant was going flat chat, because it was the easiest way to provide adequate clean drinking water (Iirc, a couple of the other water treatment plants were flooded). Not sure of the current status.
Just think its funny that the desal had to be used because of TOO much water. :-))
What Flannery should have added is that if we don’t cut emissions, we are going to get a lot of more warming than what is already in the pipeline due to the emissions so far. But maybe he thought that would be obvious.
Though the very silly Tim Flannery is not a corpse animated by ants, he does want to resurrect mammoths and modify human babies.
Further.. statistically speaking, with population growth and totally ignoring any mythical AGW, (ie based purely on past real climate records) the Qld desal plant should probably be kept in an operational condition. There have been long severe droughts even in the short history we have, so there will almost certainly be long severe droughts in the future. That’s part of the defined Australian climate.
GregO says:
March 24, 2011 at 9:26 pm
Somebody answer this humble question
While the comments above that talk about ‘western guilt’ and ‘other motives’ hold truth, beneath that the phenomena is explainable, I believe, in terms of a social evolutionary entity. Ultimately, it is the high uncertainty in the science that allows this to happen.
See http://judithcurry.com/2011/03/11/talking-past-each-other/#comment-55915
and the more substantial
http://judithcurry.com/2011/03/06/climate-story-telling-angst/#comment-53804
plus the paper posted by dixie pooh in reply
We used to have a name for people like Flannery – insane. These days we call them politicians.
Al Gored says: (March 25, 2011 at 12:42 am)
“Hmmm. Let me think. Who was the last guy with a thousand year plan? I believe there was a firm consensus in Germany at that time.”
So true, and the 10:10 video has shown what they are up to.
Green is the new BROWN.
And another point that has just come to mind..
Anyone who has been near Warragamba Dam recently will notice that there is a massive new spillway.. obviously to cope with the empty dam overflows.
(The Dapto floods scared the —- out of the real scientists/engineers wrt the dam.)
Unmanipulated (by AGW hysteria) calculations of the PMP (probably maximum precipitation) showed an awkward situation.
hmmm…. I wonder how much water was dumped in that storm in the Illawarra the other day… might make an interesting study to see what would have happened if it had hit the Warragamba catchment near the dam.
Oh, good no Ice-Age in the next 1000 years. Thankyou CO2!
Won´t someone think of our children?
Err, I mean great,great,great,great, great, etc,
grandchildren.
I’ve read one of Flannery’s books.
Rather intemperate throughout – eg “the medieval warm period is bunk”.
brc says:
March 25, 2011 at 12:00 am
“I’ve not seen anyone with carbon dioxide phobia dispute those calculations.”
*Now * we have the label for these folks : “carbophobes”
Mike Lorrey says:
March 24, 2011 at 9:46 pm:
” It was the fault of man that Earth was not a Paradise, but instead was a barren wilderness that required man to labor to tame it in order to eke a living from the earth.”
“The modern AGW movement is thus inherently influenced by these puritanical christian archetypes.”
!!!!! The ideas you quoted above were in existence LONG before Christianity! Don’t blame us for the fact that Man is inherently superstitious. The AGW cult is just the latest in a long line of guilt-inducing nonsense. Real Christianity should not be tainted by superstition.
@Mike Lorrey (0946): You have made the best and most succinct argument regarding the insanity that is the environmental/(alleged) AGW movement I have ever seen. It is exactly right that they see no one being able to “have” unless someone (or in this case something) else is hurt. Except for them, of course.
I promise to credit you when I use this argument.
God please save us from nut cases like Flannery. His “solution” is to pump sulphur into the stratosphere … easily done by adding it to jet fuel :
http://www.news.com.au/climate-plan-could-change-sky-colour/story-e6frfkp9-1111116384553
Chris Cox says:
March 24, 2011 at 9:22 pm
What Flannery didn’t say was that not only would it take up to 1000 years for temperatures to start dropping, but that temperatures will continue to rise for up to 50 years even if we were to stop emitting CO2 tomorrow.
And your scientific evidence for this is………………………….? Purrrleeeeze, not a puter model!
AND, nobody has mentioned the fact that interglacials last around 10-15,000 years, the Holocene started around 12,000 years ago, (& we’re still in ice-house conditions geologically speaking) why are we worrying, from what I can see we’re at the wrong end of the squiggly bit on the ice-core graphs?
and what proof is he using to say ALL forms of presently emitted carbon floating around now, all have exactly a 1,000yr lifespan.?
and then, as others have asked…so what or who emitted the previous carbon that made us this presently Unwarming?
the last 220 years
and really only since the 20’s? have we been emitting much carbon as power and car use grew, and populations increased fast, doesn;t gell with that statement either.
FlimFlannery ,Brown,JuLiar and penny Wrong and Guano, what a collection!
Makes me embarrassed to be an Aussie.
“Man-made CO2 seems to be accounting for just about nothing. No sea level rise. No increased storm activity. No unprecedented warming. No crises. No crises at all. All crises in fact, being as a result of poor political leadership.
Are we collectively mad?”
In Great Britain (and I use the term “Great” loosely) the greenies have taken over, the BBC is in cahoots with them, the latest is UNICEF preeching in the schools, under the guise of helping the starving by combating climate change; our children are being indoctrinated, heaven knows how you stop this?
What model did he use?
If we cut our CO2 output now(!) climate will continue its cyclic changes regardless.
Keep producing electricity with coal! It is cheap and plentiful.
I think that I have a last worked it out.
I thought that the whole world had gone mad.
I now realise that I have caught a serious virus.
I am unconcious and having a terrible nightmare.
I will soon wake up and the world will be rational again.
All that global waaaaaaaaaarming ho-ha wi is just part of my horrible dream.
That would be ~ 800 years ago
Flannery’s problem is he’s speaking from the CAGW hymn sheet when it’s based on incorrect science. It claims CO2-AGW is hidden by higher albedo of polluted clouds [smaller droplets] but that’s wrong, easily proved because as any glider pilot knows the clouds with highest albedo are rain clouds – large droplets.
So, the CAGW hypothesis was the result of a mistaken physics [from Sagan]. You correct it by adding direct backscattering predicted by Mie theory. The problem the consensus has is that pollution switches this second optical process off so it’s another AGW and better explains palaeo-climate than CO2-GW with its c. 800 year delay.
Because the process is self-limiting [albedo asymptotes to about 0.52], it also explains the recent increase of ocean heat content and ‘Trenberth’s missing heat’ – As Asia industrialised, increasing aerosol pollution led to low level tropical clouds passing more energy then this AGW switched off.
In time, the likes of Flannery will be forced to accept they were misled. The reality is that CO2-AGW is much lower than claimed and could well be net zero as predicted by Miskolczi. All that was needed was a second AGW, now discovered!
It’s been clear for a long time that the ‘Anglosphere’ is the Heart of Darkness. Not just Gaia, but every other variety of self-sabotaging idiocy. Other Euro countries are pulling out of the death spiral, re-learning how to protect their own interests against various external forces, groups and ideologies. France is leading the way upward.
Only the English-speaking world continues to surrender to every enemy. In the specific case of Gaia-worship, the Calvinist influence is obvious, but that’s not the whole story.
Poor Tim. He is not a bad person, he’s been seduced by fame but he still can lapse into honesty, as this quote demonstrates. However, it is still possible that the alarmists are right and he is simply stating how truly #$#&^% we are. I believe not and that the evidence of the last 200 years of warming suggests that life on Earth is enjoying the trend, whatever the cause but we all must admit that we do not know what the outcome of the this little experiment in changing the composition of our atmospheric gases will be. By all means let us ridicule cynical government policies like my federal government’s pointless carbon tax by pointing out the even the initiates like Flannery admit it won’t help in any way but let’s not pretend we know something we don’t. Humility is the only appropriate response to the spectacle of this remarkable universe.
I don’t know what you are complaining about. He is correct. If we cut emissions by 100% today, this will have zero impact on the temperature in 1,000 years time.
What’s wrong about that statement?
Anthony, an excellent nomination! Until you have had experience with a fair dinkum Antipodean idiot such as Tim Flannery, you have no idea of what you have missed. The folklore of the Australian and New Zealand bush was built around the monumentally ignorant individuals, mostly ‘new chums’ who thought they knew it all, who became the butt of everyday humour. Sadly, much of this folkloric humour which has been lost, swept away by a tide of PC correctness. Tim Flannery is living proof the type still exists.
Mike Lorrey, I think your’e on to something. The Warmist beliefs seem to be an echo of religious guilt with a good dollop of the ancient Puritan Witchfinder tactics in the mix; they can’t believe how great the world is, how clean the air is and how wonderful each sunrise and sunset is, so because they are generally having a Good Time it’s all going to come crashing down and ITS ALL OUR FAULT. CO2 has replaced Satan, and much of Mankind carries on with their ridiculous unevolved and primitive beliefs.
To read some really scary stuff, grab some books that describe the Puritan era in the UK – they were truly scary buggers who just knew the Devil was everywhere.
Bolt keep missing opportunity to ask anyone claiming that “all the reputable scientists agree on global warming and CO2” – to name top 10 of those reputable scientists and specify what exactly is their scientific field and where does their reputation come from?
Flannery is the master of Flim-Flam. He believes it all; but then he’s paid $750k to do so.
Tim Flanery is a goose and his quote of the week will not be reported in any Australian news meda because thay are all left wing and support labour very sad
Meanwhile in the real world the biosphere is booming while temperature has started to drop. How does this chap think co2 went down in the past from much higher levels?
The warmists are going to ask “what’s the evidence for this?” What peer reviewed paper has this come from?
Anthony,
An Ice Age cuts emissions quicker than we can.
Hopefully, the AGW cult will not last as long as the Spanish Inquisition (1478-1834).
The idiocy of this guy’s remarks should help speed up the cult’s decline, the problem is there are far too many in the lumpen proletariat who are only too happy to blindly follow the baseless scaremongering of bad science, cults and religions.
But, but, but, but, hasn’t the planet has stopped warming, according Phil Jones, so what is Flannery thinking?
So if stopping all CO2 emissions globally will not “tackle global warming” and temperatures are going to keep on arisin, then I am gonna go out and buy a big 4×4, because obviously any attempt at tackling climate change is utterly futile and a waste of effort, time, money and energy.
There is no way in hell that the industrialised nations are going to voluntarily return literally to a technological stone age. So whatever we do now makes absolutely NO difference at all. So why keep on trying to tackle something that (a) (if the warmists are wrong, might not be a problem at all, or(b) if they are right, we literally cannot do anything about anyway?
So why are politicians still planning on bankrupting so much of the industrial world over the next 50 years with useless, pointless, futile carbon targets when they will not make any difference at all?
Mike Borgelt: ‘Now we have the label for these folks: “carbophobes”.’
I prefer “misanthracists” or “anthracophobes” for carbon-haters.
I think we need to start an archive of Flanneryism’s…
They are a bit like Bushisms but not so funny or intelligent…
Max Hugoson, I don’t know where you picked up that quote, but it is the sort of thing the present ‘new religion’ of the Church of AGW is throwing into debates. In part it is an effort to discredit religion, in particular Christianity and it is as false as the claim that the ‘Church’ opposed Darwin. That was a myth ‘spun’ by Huxley, a prominent anti-church campaigner in his time who re-interpretted letters and debates between theologians and Darwin to misrepresent their legitimate challenge to Darwin’s methodology, not his conclusions. The same is being done here. It has nothing whatever to do with science, it is simply a thinly veiled attack on religion and religious belief.
I read recently the opinion of a prominent author, that the Western Societies – ie: Europe and the North American nations, suffered a catastrophic and collective nervous breakdown and massive loss of self confidence and esteem in the late 1960s. In part this was fueled by the Psychological War being waged by the Communist Bloc who, through manipulation of anti-war and anti-nuclear campaign organisations, managed to spread hysterical fear of nuclear disaster. That has, I believe, fed into the psyche of todays ‘Greens’ and ‘Eco-warriors’ to the extent that the science is no longer the issue with many of them – the religion has become ‘we are all going to die because of evil capitalist profiteers stripping the planets assets and changing the climate.’
Hollywood must also take some of the blame for this sort of mentality, the bulk of any given population, seeing something like “The Day after Tomorrow” or “Volcano” don’t have the education or the ability to distinguish between fact and Hollywood fantasy. This is what will kill us, not climate change.
Gee if only that were backed by research.
Oh, what do we have here … http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090127163403.htm
“The pioneering study, led by NOAA senior scientist Susan Solomon, shows how changes in surface temperature, rainfall, and sea level are largely irreversible for more than 1,000 years after carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are completely stopped.“
When I hear Tim Flummery I am reminded of the way real medical professionals deal with “natural medicine practioners.” I work with a few medical professionals who must deal with said natural medicine snake charmers. They are invariably polite, even waiting for them to leave the room before rolling their eyes, but why make a patient unnecessarily anxious by disparaging something that they have faith in. However when that pseudo-science actually threatens the patients health they take action. In any sensible world the CAGW proselytizers would be treated this way, smile and nod then make an excuse to leave. But now they are threatening the very real economic well being of everybody. How did we get to the point in Australia where these idiots are in government and seriously proposing to tax the air we breath?
Hilarious, but for the fact that it’s people like Flannery who force through stupid laws taxing something that makes precious little (if any) difference to anything. He’d be perfectly at home in the UK’s corridors of power, too.
He really should have been called Flammery. OED definition of a flam:
1 A fanciful notion, a whim.
2 A fanciful composition of verse.
3 A fabrication or falsehood; (a piece of) deception; flattery, blarney.
– If only he’d made it rhyme, then all three would apply.
Well there’s no evidence that it’s warmer now than it was a thousand years ago so why should it be any different in a thousand years time?
But what has CO2 got to do with it?
The Climate Commisioners were out today explaining the science in Geelong, it’s been broadcast multiple times on the ABC. The Flannery quote that got me swearing at the TV was when he rather nicely described us all as a “Ghenghis Khan Species”. It a real privilege to live in Australia and have our government officials describe us all as barbarians.
GregO says:
March 24, 2011 at 9:26 pm
“Are we collectively mad?”
Yes, we are collectively mad. We live in an age of hysteria. We are intent on grabbing any reason for fear and exalting it to high heaven. We compulsively treat low-risk fears as if they were serious. The idiotic non-principle known as the Precautionary Principle has been enshrined in Western governments.
With the Japanese tsunami, the MSM went around the bend. They took a natural tragedy and converted into a hate fest for nuclear energy. Why? Maybe our collective hysterical sickness. But maybe the entire MSM has now decided that the money to be made through environmental taxes and trading scams, such as carbon credits, is just too much to let go.
Of course, there is also the problem that our Left is communist and quite dedicated to Alinskyite tactics. But communism is enough. It pits each group against all so that the all powerful state is needed to protect each group from the exaggerated fears fed by the all powerful state.
Thanks for not asking that other question: What is the solution?
Crispin in Waterloo says:
March 24, 2011 at 10:40 pm
LOL. I had the same thing happen, with ol’ Flim-Flam’s book “The Weathermakers”. A family member “loaned” it to me (really, more convinced me to just take it and read it), perhaps thinking I would see the light. If anything, it had the opposite effect. They got it back with lots of commentary in the margins or any blank spaces, written in red. I didn’t make it all the way through either, though I made a valiant effort.
The corollary to Tim’s hyper-Alarmist statement is that failure to “cut emmissions” would necessarily result in planetary disaster of biblical proportions, or Thermageddon.
Re Shevva says:
March 25, 2011 at 1:05 am
For the UK and OZ it’s a race to the bottom.
Trouble for the Ozzies is they don’t have help like us in the EU.
—————————————————————–
Too true, as the excellent Der Spiegel article showed. By far the biggest threat to the environment are our politicians.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,751469,00.html
Though in the UK I reckon Scottish First Minister Salmond (with an eye to EU/UN promotion no doubt) is leading the race over the cliff to economic suicide. His relentless pro wind turbine anti-nuclear policies have already succeeded in increasing fuel poeverty from 1 in 4 Scottish households in 2007 to 1 in 3 in 2009.
(See section 56 of this report)
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/s3/committees/eet/documents/ClimateChange-RPP-webversion.pdf
Hardly surprising though when many of its policies seem to be driven by such bodies as WWF Scotland . (After all the EU doesn’t just fund the research for CAGW, it also funds those lobbying against it – helps the EU claim its laws are brought in by popular demand!!!)
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/43291
Bolt with all the other nuts.
Andy West says:
March 25, 2011 at 1:50 am
GregO says:
March 24, 2011 at 9:26 pm
“Ultimately, it is the high uncertainty in the science that allows this to happen.”
When the uncertainty is high enough it is no longer science. It is a collection of hunches. That is the case with climate science.
Orwell was better at prediction than Hansen, Jones, the whole bunch.
Alexander K says:
March 25, 2011 at 3:44 am
“To read some really scary stuff, grab some books that describe the Puritan era in the UK – they were truly scary buggers who just knew the Devil was everywhere.”
Today in the USA they are the PC Thought Police, who are everywhere and who find an evil mind behind every non-authorized bit of speech or writing. For example, the lady down the hall from me owns a Prius. She suspects that I am a denier who fails to respect her beliefs and her sanctified purchase of the Prius. Of course, I dare not admit under intense questioning what I think about her and her Prius.
Perhaps Mr. Flannery is greasing the skids to refocus the “need” for carbon taxes from that of reducing CO2 production to that of mitigation of effects.
The propaganda folks running the show must have decided that the selling of the need to lower production of CO2 was losing its effect. Too much scare (for now). If they focus on mitigation, a whole new campaign that can harness the excitement of new civil engineering projects, and high tech homes and such opens up to them. They can certainly insert some scare stories now and then, but taking on an overall positive message for use of the new taxes is a great opportunity, especially for the more creative graphic artists and PR spinmeisters.
RE:
Brendon says:
March 25, 2011 at 4:38 am
Gee if only that were backed by research.
Oh, what do we have here … http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090127163403.htm
“The authors relied on measurements as well as many different models to support the understanding of their results. They focused on drying of particular regions and on thermal expansion of the ocean because observations suggest that humans are contributing to changes that have already been measured.”
That’s good enough for me. “Legs off, fins on, add a bit of gold paint, made good, and you have a wonderful goldfish.” (Monty Python) The same goes for GCMs and the addition of a few bits of real science to lend them authenticity. Fortunately, we know that they are all drunk on [CO2] and are having none of it.
…because the system is overburdened with CO2…
This is pure speculation and renders the entire comment to be BS.
Clearly anyone agreeing with this sort of assertion can be placed into the ‘religious kook’ category and needs to be merely observed for dangerous behavior.
Unfortunately a great number of people who agree with this sort madness are either in power or influencing decision makers today.
So there is a lot of dangerous behavior to be observed: mindless policies, taxes and enterprises that only work if the masses are forced to pay more and more.
I like my “carbochondriac” better because:
1. It’s alliterative.
2. It’s a stronger sneer (a hypochondriac, and by extension any -chondriac, is a bedwetting hysteric, not merely -phobic (avoidant)).
But I thought we were all supposed to die of acid rain ..? then it was changed to warming and floods, and now it bloody cold.
Honestly, keeping up with this world-about-to-end lark is doing my head in
Brendon says:
March 25, 2011 at 4:38 am
Gee if only that were backed by research.
Oh, what do we have here … http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090127163403.htm
Thanks for that bit of “research” Brendon, backed by playstation modeling. Gee, if only it were actual science.
The AGW movement is a akin to the Y2K crisis. There is no crisis however there is an opportunity to spend billions of dollars.
We are carbon base life forms. Increased atmospheric CO2 causes the biosphere to increase, desertification to reduce. (Two mechanisms: There is more precipitation world wide if the planet warms with most of the warming at high latitudes and plants reduce the number of stomata on their leaves which enables them to loss less water. During the glacial cycle 2/3 of the Amazon forest turned to savana due to the low CO2 and lower global temperatures. There is 15 fold increase in dust from transported from deserts deposited on the ice sheets during the cyclic glacial phases.)
The AGW propaganda continues. Multiple the amount of warming expected by a factor of 5 to 10. Tell people the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheet will melt. Manipulate the data.
When basis financial analysis shows benefits do not justify the cost, tell the public that we are too busy to do the financial analysis. Say doing benefit analysis is not necessary. Science also is not necessary. Write books about a fictional dystopia, “The Day after Tomorrow” or Tim Flammery’s Weather Makers.
“Bolt: Look, we’ve got that argument…. I’ll ask just one last time… If you don’t know just say so, but if you do know, I know it’s got all those caveats, but just tell us how much the world’s temperature will fall if we do what you recommend and what Julia Gillard plans.
Daley: As I said, we haven’t run the numbers on how much it will make a difference if Australia acts completely alone.
Bolt: You should have.
Daley: The reason we haven’t done that is because Australia is not acting alone. Therefore it’s not a very helpful thing to analyse.
“Not helpful” means you’d realise the pain is not worth the gain. Whever we do – whatevery anyone does – hardly seems worth it, really.
And by “not helpful”, the people pushing the schemes say they’d rather not tell you the truth. You might ask too many awkward questions.
That is why no one yet pushing an ETS or a carbon tax will answer our question. And why we drew exactly the same blank a fortnight ago with Jill Duggan, from the European Commission’s emissions trading scheme. “
The Aussies here will understand this, Flannery is a bloody liar by deception and an appeal to authority !
I, by chance, happened to see a bit of the meeting today in Geelong where the first Government educational lecture was given by all these experts, including Flannery.
Here he was, claiming he was a member of a “Board at Oxford” and they were all experts on this, AGW, and Blah, blah, blah.
So I checked, 10 seconds on Google.
The internet is like God, sees all and forgets nothing.
From Google, “Oxford Geoengineering Research was established as a Community Interest Company in September 2009. It is based in Oxford and while not formally affiliated with the University of Oxford….”
“The founding director of Oxford Geoengineering Research is Tim Kruger, who is currently researching a technique to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere………”
From their home page,
“Mission
This organisation seeks to facilitate the attainment and distribution of knowledge about geoengineering to scientists, governments, NGOs, corporate entities and the wider public. It is not advocating geoengineering, but rather seeking to carefully research all the implications of geoengineering approaches so as to assess their potential and the risks they carry.”
With a little economical use of the truth, he had everyone believing he was on some Oxford University Board. The AGW crowd know exactly what words to leave out or put in, to change the meaning of what they are saying. What he should have said was that he was a member of the “Oxford Geoengineering Research Board”, a completely different kettle of fish.
You have to hand it to this guy, he conned $90million out of the Australian Government for his “geothermal experiment” that promptly failed, and now, today the bores they drilled are sealed up with concrete.
Hey I’ve been pushing the carbon phobia thing all week. I was hoping it would catch on.
Here’s my guide:
‘co2 phobic’ – short form. As in ‘you’re just a co2 phobic. Drink a can of coke to get over your fear’.
‘c02 phobia’ – descriptive. As in ‘that weird guy with the composting toilet had the worst case of co2 phobia I’ve ever seen. He even burped into a plastic bag and buried it in the garden – said he was sequestering co2 to save his grandchildren’.
‘carbon dioxide phobia’ – long form, descriptive. Usage ‘if you lot don’t get over your collective carbon dioxide phobia, we’ll be shivering our behinds off and cooking with twigs in a couple of years’
Although I do like carbonachondria. I just don’t like to opt-in to the usage of ‘carbon’ without adding the ‘dioxide’. I also suspect some of the brainwashed may not be able to decipher it, and I don’t want to give any oxygen (pun intended) to the memes of ‘carbon tax’ and ‘carbon pollution’ and ‘carbon economy’.
If you want to go nuclear, drop the ‘carbon dioxide nazi’ tag. Because like ‘denier’, ‘nazi’ doesn’t contain any literary baggage from the war, does it? /sarc
If you jump off the roof and break your right leg, it will takes weeks to heal, even if you refrain from jumping off roofs in the future. Of course if you do jump off the roof again you may well break both legs. All Flannery is saying is that we should stop jumping off the roof and let the planet heal.
There is nothing new in Flannery’s statement. Obviously the CO2 we have pumped into the atmosphere will take awhile to dissipate and cause warming until it does. If we pump more CO2 into the atmosphere the worse it will get. (And it will take even longer for ocean pH to return to normal.)
I cannot even fathom by what logic one could conclude that this shows a lack of concern for future generations.
Every society needs a religion, whether communist or capitalist. Every religion has a bogeyman to keep the insolent in line and the communicant in fear. Since we got rid of Satan, the new bogeyman is CO2. No matter how it defies all the facts that CO2 is not a problem, the shadow of fear overwhelms all. Then there are the outcasts, the excommunicated, heretics and the witches that are persecuted and hunted – today the new enemy are the “deniers”.
Just let me get this right. So we’re never going to know, if it made the blindest bit of difference… &. all those tax dollars later.
How convenient.
He said we’re dealing with probabilities here. Any competent psychiatrist could come up with a better more appropriate word for what they are dealing with than probabilities. And so could competent police inspectors and public prosecutors.
Which millennium?
That’s an amazing delusion he’s got going there. For his sake I hope he’s at least enjoying his fantasy in high-definition. There’s no reason to cut costs on the instrument of your deception, you might as well enjoy the ride.
According to the World Climate Widget, the UAH “global temperature anomaly” (as meaningless as that is) is below the 30 year average. So what the heck is Flannery talking about? We’re already back to 1979 temps!
I wonder if Mr. Flannery has ceased to use any modern convenience, or any manufactured item. Surely he practices what he preaches. No?
An acquaintance of mine, an emeritus biology professor, has mentioned Flannery’s book “The Weather Makers” to me many times with the same reverence the pope gives to the bible. I didn’t figure Flannery was a moron but the quote in the OP sure makes me wonder.
Flannery: Just let me finish and say this. If the world as a whole cut all emissions tomorrow the average temperature of the planet is not going to drop in several hundred years, perhaps as much as a thousand years because the system is overburdened with CO2 that has to be absorbed and that only happens slowly.
Watts (or Bolt?): “Crikey! So much for the “think of the grandchildren” argument used by Dr. James Hansen.”
I think Watts (or Bolt?) is talking nonsense here. If we stopped emissions today, our grandchildren would be happy. The climate of today’s earth is what we are seeking to preserve. to the best of our knowledge, if the global temperature goes up only a little it should be OK. What we are concerned about are temperature increases in excess of 2C, which would be associated with big changes in regional climates in a short time, with large scale extinctions of species, as well as displacement of many millions of people.
There’s a prime example of a world-wide government mandate’s effect on natural phenomenon: just look at how well cutting CFCs has done in repairing the “ozone hole”. Doesn’t seem to be decreasing in size, but there is always an excuse that indicates its lack of response to lower CFC emissions “is not inconsistent with models”.
So inferentially, the temperatures we have today are thanks to whatever they did in the Medieval Warm Period?
That was big of them. – Still, ‘ bet they never had such imaginative ways or raising taxes back then.
Theo Goodwin says:
March 25, 2011 at 5:00 am
“With the Japanese tsunami, the MSM went around the bend. They took a natural tragedy and converted into a hate fest for nuclear energy. Why? Maybe our collective hysterical sickness. But maybe the entire MSM has now decided that the money to be made through environmental taxes and trading scams, such as carbon credits, is just too much to let go. ”
It is even worse with the German media. Each one tries to scream “nuclear catastrophe” louder than the other. It’s difficult to be the loudest alarmist when all the competition tries the same. I understood that their business model is not to convey information, and has never been, but to use information as a basis and exaggerate it in the way they think sells the most units. For instance, they say “Nuclear catastrophe out of control, number of victims in Japan continues to rise” in one headline, not even mentioning that there are zero radiation fatalities but only from quake and Tsunami.
So, we can use the media from now on to find out what the media wants us to think; but we can’t use the media to find information about the world. That’s where we are. Very much like the Pravda in Soviet times.
Lady Life Grows says:
March 24, 2011 at 9:33 pm
“Who/what funds European and Aussie science?”
European: The 7th Research Framework of the EU – sort of like a 5-year plan (remember, the structure of the EU mirrors the structure of the Soviet Union, and there are a lot of 5-year-plans in the EU. Just google “EU 5 year plan”.)
http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/home_en.html
He just parrotted Solomon’s paper.
GregO says:
March 24, 2011 at 9:26 pm
“What is it about the English speaking world that captures our imagination about man-made CO2 destroying the world.”
The following about sums it up I think:
Truth and lies are faced alike; their port, taste, and proceedings are the same, and we look upon them with the same eye. I find that we are not only remiss in defending ourselves from deceit, but that we seek and offer ourselves to be gulled; we love to entangle ourselves in vanity, as a thing conformable to our being.
~Michel de Montaigne
There is something in Biology curriculums that makes these guys hate humankind. We are astounded by the CO2 minister’s remarks but he isn’t capable of thinking how this looks to the taxpayer. He is making a statement about how we ugliest of species have irreparably damaged the planet. Socialists have taken over the schools but only the most rabid doctrinaire types that even other socialists dislike, have concentrated on biology departments. If there are any independent, individualist, thinking biololgists who sneaked through with at degree, for gosh sakes show yourselves. Otherwise we will know what you think about all issues even before you are born.
As their AGW hypothesis gets unraveled over time.They come out with statements that gets stupider and stupider.
After all their many modeling predictions have failed utterly.Hansen’s ,the IPCC’s and many more have failed scientifically.
All they have left are stupid statements.That is why they are getting stupider and stupider.
So, essentially, that can be read as they now want to be tax funded and subsidized to the end of time.
I was so going to stay out of this, not being an Oz, and all, but then eadler at 8:01 am said:
The emphasis above is mine: to hi-light the conditionals that eadler usually applies to his/her arguments.
I want to know who made eadler God? How did He decide what the ideal climate is that ‘we are trying to preserve’? And how does he/she know that things will ‘be OK’ if the ‘temperature only goes up a little’? We are so in need of your guidance eadler, oh great one!
And finally, where in hell (ah – it must have been there!) do you get the rise to be 2C? (And in what period of time is that?) AFAIK, the only place this number is bandied about is in Al Gore’s head. Tell me, oh wise one, what will kill more people, 0.7C increase in a century, or a 30 year cold spell?
(And for those thinking of a name for eadler and others, I still prefer the one I heard over a year ago: ‘warm-mongers’!)
Hey, where’s MY non-falsifiable hypothesis, for which I get paid big bucks to push for the gubmint?
IT”S NOT FAIR!
This strikes me as another case of verbal inflation. The cataclysmic predictions of past “heaters” have failed to move the masses, so they’re trying even more dire predictions in the home of tugging some heart strings. Instead they’re just desensitizing the population.
eadler says:
March 25, 2011 at 8:01 am
“I think Watts (or Bolt?) is talking nonsense here. If we stopped emissions today, our grandchildren would be happy. ”
No; they would be dead. Or never born.
Robert Laughlin did a pretty good analysis of this concept in an interview at Econ Talk.
Same logic: if we cut emissions, and if CO2 is a problem, then the problem is going to be around for 10,000 years. If we cut oil consumption by huge amounts, it delays the effect only a few hundred years.
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/08/laughlin_on_the.htm
It is long, but I had a friend (who is totally a warmist and whose wife sets environmental policy for a liberal mayor of a large city) listen to it, and he has just about changed his opinion.
Little victories, I guess.
Dennis Wingo says:
March 24, 2011 at 11:56 pm
Why are we so irrational.
It is the rich feeling guilty for being rich (and yes ALL of us in the west are fantastically rich compared to 99.999% of all mankind before the year 1700 and the industrial era) and this is a form of self flagellation.
=============================================
Yes, but this still doesn’t address as to why this is almost a uniquely an English speaking nations issue. Were it not for the U.S., G.B. Canada, Australia, and N.Z., I dare say we would have never even heard the term “Global warming”. There must be something inherent to the language that triggers an insanity mechanism in many people. Years from now sociologists will be arguing about how and why we slipped into this mad, mad world.
If the weather right now is what they (alarmists) say AGW brings us, then I sure as hell don’t want to be around when the next ice age comes along. Here in the northeast (USA) it is the 5th full day past the vernal equinox and the g – d temperature hasn’t been more than 5 degrees past freezing in a week (at least it feels that way), and it’s not forecast to get warmer until mid next week. The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning here 2 days ago, forecasting about 8-12 inches of snow – we got 4. Some areas near us got hit pretty hard with up to 10 inches (higher elevations) but for the most part it was a bust forecast.
The point is (and we all pretty much know this here): if they can’t get a 24 or 48 hour forecast correct (and I know it’s not easy, sometimes impossible), what makes these people think they can tell you how the addition or subtraction of a trace gas (.039 %) is going to affect the climate in 1000 years, let alone the next 100?
Anyone left swallowing that kool-aid is completely off their nut.
”Read the entire transcript and listen to the audio here”
Not on your flippin nelly!
The quote made me wince enough…but FFS – on that kind of logic – how on earth did all those several thousand ppm of CO2 in past geological time ever manage to disperse?
It’s amusing to see Flannery’s quote framed as though it is some sort of dark admission of something. Rather, he is just stating something that is broadly understood.
Several people have mentioned Susan Solomon’s paper “Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions”. Flannery is not making any radical “quote of the millenium”. It’s basic stuff… It’s a bitch, but it’s inherent to the physical nature of the dilemma. See also:
Risk Communication on Climate: Mental Models and Mass Balance
“But there is a deeper problem: poor understanding of stocks and flows—the concept of accumulation. Accumulation is pervasive in everyday experience: Our bathtubs accumulate the inflow of water through the faucet less the outflow through the drain, our bank accounts accumulate deposits less withdrawals, and we all struggle to control our weight by managing the inflows and outflows of calories through diet and exercise. Yet, despite their ubiquity, research shows that people have difficulty relating the flows into and out of a stock to the level of the stock, even in simple, familiar contexts such as bank accounts and bathtubs. Instead, people often assess system dynamics using a pattern-matching heuristic, assuming that the output of a system should “look like”—be positively correlated with—its inputs (12, 13).
Although sometimes useful, correlational reasoning fails in systems with important accumulations…
… Most believe that stopping the growth of emissions stops the growth of GHG concentrations. The erroneous belief that stabilizing emissions would quickly stabilize the climate supports wait-and-see policies but violates basic laws of physics. “
Understanding Public Complacency About Climate Change: Adults’ mental models of climate change violate conservation of matter
This is like deja vu, all over again.
Anthony, this is almost verbatim what the tree huggers said in 1970 in order to get the Clean Air And Water Act passed. Funny you should mention the quote of the millennium. But how about TEN millennia?
They said in 1970, “If we don’t put one more drop of pollution into Lake Erie, it will take ten thousand years for the lake to clean itself.”
Granted, the clean air we now breathe and cleaner water we have both do have to do with that Act.
But I have been angry as hell at the liars ever since. Why? Because ten years later, a study showed that with pollutants reduced by 75%, Lake Erie had cleaned itself up by 90%.
Ten years versus ten thousand years.
100% reduction versus 75%.
The mendacious tree huggers think that anything goes, if it is “in defense of” our poor, poor defenseless planet.
While I don’t argue we should be careful about pollution, if they have to lie to get their way, well then all of us should be allowed to lie to get our way – in ANY area of interest to us – shouldn’t we? Let’s just all run around pulling numbers and claims right out of our rear ends.
(I do have a few choice words that I had to bite my tongue to resist putting them in here…)
The obvious tactic to implement here is to ask him for his source.
rustneversleeps,
You turn a blind eye to fact that there is no evidence that CO2 causes any problems. But there is plenty of evidence that more CO2 is beneficial. Does that alter your world view? Or will you still argue, without any empirical, testable evidence, that CO2 causes global harm?
@DirkH March 25, 2011 at 9:58 am
Thanks! That was the loudest I’ve laughed here in a long time!
These people have no idea how many people would die if we got rid of industry. “Rid of” as in the starving to death of 3 to 5 billion people. The warmists must think that they and theirs would be the holy ones left over.
I do want to say this regarding my previous comment: I understand the difference between weather and climate. I prefer to think of it as Mark Twain put it: “Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.”
Mike says:
“There is nothing new in Flannery’s statement. Obviously the CO2 we have pumped into the atmosphere will take awhile to dissipate and cause warming until it does. If we pump more CO2 into the atmosphere the worse it will get. (And it will take even longer for ocean pH to return to normal.)”
Neither of your assertions has any basis in real world evidence. CO2 may cause some minuscule warming. But where is your empirical evidence? And you have no evidence that ocean pH is altered by CO2.
Without evidence all you have is a conjecture; an opinion. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence showing that more CO2 is beneficial. You can wring your hands over this invented non-problem, but it’s a waste of energy. All you’re doing is scaring yourself with ghost stories.
GregO
In reference to “What is it about the English speaking world that captures our imagination about man-made CO2 destroying the world.” (?) And ” Are we collectively mad?”
No, it’s just that most institutions in the English speaking world have gradually been infiltrated and taken over by covert communists over the last 50 years. Today they finally control most of the means of mass communication. They are now powerful enough to make an open move toward world communism. CO2 hysteria serves two purposes: to destroy the engine of capitalism, and to “redistribute” wealth (read “class warfare”).
Brendon says:
March 25, 2011 at 4:38 am
“Gee if only that were backed by research.
Oh, what do we have here … http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090127163403.htm
“The pioneering study, led by NOAA senior scientist Susan Solomon…”
Well, alrighty then! A “pioneering” study by Susan Solomon. The debate is over! LOL.
Alexander K says: March 25, 2011 at 3:44 am
[——Mike Lorrey, I think your’e on to something. The Warmist beliefs seem to be an echo of religious guilt with a good dollop of the ancient Puritan Witchfinder tactics in the mix; —-having a Good Time it’s all going to come crashing down and ITS ALL OUR FAULT. CO2 has replaced Satan, and much of Mankind carries on with their ridiculous unevolved and primitive beliefs.]
————————————————————————-
Alexander K. – a good observation, imo. Except really it’s about power. Superstition and guilt equates with ignorance. Witch doctors, religious leaders, politicians all use it. Ignorance allows these people to use anything that comes to hand to exert influence over the masses in order to gain or retain power over them and, incidentally, to accrue wealth. The guilt bit was especially valuable for religious leaders- kept the masses under the thumb. Anything that we don’t know enough about can be used for this purpose. Ask any witch doctor – he can tell you how it works. Well now we have got rid of god (it seems) so bang goes the traditional religious bit but the pea has been switched under the ‘science’ cup. The trouble with this one is it is on a massive global scale and the damage that the ‘witch doctors’ are creating will be massive. That’s the scary bit.
Douglas
For perspective, there was the mentioned Susan Solomon work:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/13/more-wisdom-via-solomon-global-warming-has-passed-the-point-of-no-return/
Thus whatever civilization we have can revert to a worldwide “Dark Ages” and it’ll be a millennium before the climate notices the difference.
This was followed by:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/10/abandon-all-hope-ye-who-read-this/
Thus we can send the entire planet back to the Stone Age, and it’ll still take a millennium.
Thus by the best Peer-Reviewed Climate Science™, Tim Flannery is reasonably correct, if it’s understood that when he says “If the world as a whole cut all emissions tomorrow…” that should mean ALL emissions, everywhere in the world.
If all he wants to cut right now is Australia’s paltry emissions, and only to some percentage of current levels or to pre-Industrial Revolution levels (did Australia even have any measurable anthropogenic emissions back then?), don’t even bother. Wait until the worldwide binding enforced treaty, insisting on one that ELIMINATES ALL EMISSIONS, or it won’t matter at all. BTW, best of luck getting such a treaty. ☺
Douglas says:
March 25, 2011 at 11:25 am
Re your comment, I love this parallel example of today’s AGW cult…
“The Age of Witch-Hunting thus seems pretty congruent with the era of the
Little Ice Age. The peaks of the persecution coincide with the critical
points of climatic deterioration. Witches traditionally had been held
responsible for bad weather which was so dangerous for the precarious
agriculture of the pre-industrial period. But it was only in the 15th
century that ecclesiastical and secular authorities accepted the reality of
that crime. The 1420ies, the 1450ies, and the last two decades of the
fifteenth century, well known in the history of climate, were decisive years
in which secular and ecclesiastical authorities increasingly accepted the
existence of weather-making witches. During the “cumulative sequences of
coldness” in the years 1560-1574, 1583-1589 and 1623-1630, again 1678-1698
(Pfister 1988, 150) people demanded the eradication of the witches whom they
held responsible for climatic aberrations. Obviously it was the impact of
the Little Ice Age which increased the pressure from below and made parts of
the intellectual elites believe in the existence of witchcraft. So it is
possible to say: witchcraft was the unique crime of the Little Ice Age.”
http://www.scribd.com/doc/32396573/Witch-Hunting-Maunder
// If we cut emissions today, global temperatures are not likely to drop for about a thousand years. //
And if we don’t cut emissions?
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/6/1704.full
Given that no one is able to predict how much it will cost, how much effort it will need or how long it will take to bump our temperature down a decimal point or two, I was thinking. The supposed surplus energy is 1.5 W/M^2, the Earth is 510,072,000 Km^2 or 7.65*10^16 W, dividing by 200 W/m^2 give 3,825 million km^2 of Earth surface that needs to be shaded. How hard can it be?
Greg O
A great question Greg and one I often wonder about. Why indeed do the masses tend to gravitate toward such obvious (in my view) irrationality?
I’m no psychologist but my theory is the phenomena is largely driven by two primary and I think related factors: 1) a human need for spiritual connectivity, and 2) a deep-seated state of denial regarding the reality of mankind’s vulnerability in this world.
I believe most human beings yearn for and during their lives strive to establish some sort of spiritual connection to the universe. For some, the need is fulfilled by belief in and adherence to established religious dogmas. Those who find themselves unable to commit these ideas for any number of reasons, continue to search for spiritual footing and ultimately either find it, or grow to accept (or maybe rebel against) their state of imbalance in this regard. In the course of searching, it seems common for poeple to manufacture substitute “religions” out of thin air. This is where environmentalism, the mother of global warming and climate change, comes into play. Much has been written about the similarities between the green movement and religion. I see both deeply religious and non-religious people practice “greenism” in what I percieve to be in most cases rather overly-convenient efforts to somehow deepen their sense of spiritual connectivity to something. I like to call it feel-good environmentalism. It doesn’t really accomplish much (at least from the perspective of a non-adherent), but you feel good about it.
In the civilized world (for lack of a better term), people are protected. They are insulated and far-removed from the risks and hazards of day to day existence our forebears faced. They for the most part can’t provide their own food nor their own shelter. I think these people on an almost subconscious level cling to the notion that controlling this benign gas (or more accurately insisting that others control it) somehow will provide them with an assurance of long term security. They make this choice and irrationally focus on it rather than face the reality that earthquakes, fires, floods, droughts, tornados, tsunamis, volcanoes, pestilence, hurricanes, meteors, ice ages, hostile populations and any number of other naturally occurring and truly potentially catastrophic events could decimate their very existence at virtually any moment. People in general strike me as exceedingly reluctant to acknowledge such vulnerability.
Who can blame them? Would that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere were the biggest challenge facing mankind. There is a certain comfort I think, a false sense of security that comes from the world view that this is indeed the case. So to answer your question, I’d say that multitudes of faith-seeking (again for lack for a better term) and frightened people in the English speaking world tell themselves that man-made CO2 is destroying the world – and that they have the means to stop it – largely so they can fulfill their need for spiritual connection while they simultaneously avoid facing the overwhelming reality of their utterly uncertain futures.
Collective madness? In a sense I’d say so, yes.
Well then… I hope it is worth the wait…and the expense!!
Surely, if this is really what we will achieve by a tax on what we all exhale, is it not now time to assign this drivel to the bin and have the great scientific minds start working on how we as a species adapt to live in an ever changing climate.
I can’t imagine Tim being “Climate Commissar” for too long if he keeps emitting truths like this.
OK Julia et al…explain (lie) your way out of this one…. We’re waiting…
Al Gored says:
March 25, 2011 at 11:25 am
I got as far as her statement saying Africa was supposed to see more desert because of increased CO2 when exactly the OPPOSITE is being observed for sub-Sahara Africa over the past several decades (or are they delaying any impact for many centuries in the future; if so I’m rooting for all the immediate benefit we can get).
I’d say the only way this is a “pioneering” study is that Ms. Solomon has a lot more to study. She might even look at the real world rather than conjecture and pontificate with worthless models.
Tried not to laugh too loudly lest it disturb the neighbors…
I see we are getting the magical 2 degrees C limit thrown around again. There was an article in Der Spiegel about 6 months ago involving an interview with Germany’s head climatology guy ( sorry I cannot recall his name) He admitted in the article that he “invented ” the 2c figure to satisfy the politicians and said there was NO scientific data or evidence to back it up. He explained the German politicians kept saying the science was too complicted to explain to the voters so they need a snappy one liner or sound bite — in response he gave them the 2C idea for their propoganda.
@Smokey says: March 25, 2011 at 10:54 am
“Mike says:
“There is nothing new in Flannery’s statement. Obviously the CO2 we have pumped into the atmosphere will take awhile to dissipate and cause warming until it does. If we pump more CO2 into the atmosphere the worse it will get. (And it will take even longer for ocean pH to return to normal.)”
Neither of your assertions has any basis in real world evidence. CO2 may cause some minuscule warming. But where is your empirical evidence? And you have no evidence that ocean pH is altered by CO2.
Without evidence all you have is a conjecture; an opinion. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence showing that more CO2 is beneficial. You can wring your hands over this invented non-problem, but it’s a waste of energy. All you’re doing is scaring yourself with ghost stories.”
————————
Wow. I know you are in denial but this really takes that cake. What I say won’t matter to you. It will go right by you. But maybe someone out there will be interested.
His evidence that there is no evidence of a drop in ocean pH is a blog posting by David Middleton, who tells us: I have been a geoscientist in the evil oil and gas industry for almost 30 years. So, he does not have a background in oceanography and has a obvious conflict of interest. Further he cites evidence for my claim! He derides it, but that’s no surprise. Thus evidence exists. Skeptical readers should look at the balance of evidence to develop an informed opinion. And your opinion might, “I not sure yet.” That’s OK. That’s not denial.
Smoky knows full well evidence for CO2 lowering ocean pH exists. But, since he does not want to believe this, he first thinks it must be wrong – after all someone from the oil industry says so – then decides it does not even exist! This is called being in denial. It is not at all the same as being skeptical. A skeptic acknowledges that it is a complex issue and that there will likely be conflicting evidence. But he or she attempts within their means to look at the preponderance of the evidence.
For my first claim see the Science Daily article Brendon referenced. And notice too the responses he got from PJB , Bruce Cabb and Al Gored. All they do is try to poke fun at it. These folks are like the losers from high school who sat in the back and cutup during class. They are not skeptics.
RockyRoad just above, to his credit, does offer a bit of a critique. But he quit reading as soon as something confused him. But at least he tired.
Here is the study: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/01/28/0812721106.abstract
And here is Solomon’s vitae: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/csd/staff/susan.solomon/susan.solomon.cv.pdf
PS: dzalexander posted a link to the full study by Solomon et al.
Mike,
Please show us ocean pH trends with error bars.
And you do know of course that the Solomon paper is based on models?
Ocean and vegetation have been absorbing about 2% each year of the excess CO2 above 280 ppm for the last 200 years. There has been no change in that rate. 2010’s numbers came in at exactly the same rate. Anyone with a calculator or a spreadsheet should be able to figure the lifetime of increased CO2 and it is not 1000 years.
Temperatures will follow right behind the declining CO2 since the lag time seems to be very short going by the OHC content numbers.
The problem is the climate scientists do not even know the basic numbers behind the Carbon cycle. But their climate models do? (the ones that have not been programmed with the basic numbers behind the Carbon cycle because the climate modelers do not even know what the real numbers are).
And Flannery has been put in charge of implementing a Carbon tax when he doesn’t even understand the basic numbers behind the Carbon cycle. It’s actually rather ridiculous but it is not the first time one could say this about this science. It lives on previously made-up myths that no climate sceintist will try to correct because they get black-balled if they do.
The CO2 lifetime has even been quoted as 200,000 years more and more recently.
Mike,
Your pnas “study” is by Susan Solomon, a chemist with an agenda. And I note that she has no background in oceanography – the same exact criticism you leveled at David Middleton. Is that Susan’s picture on the right side of the pnas page? Anyway, her paper is based on a model. Models are not evidence. It’s just an appeal to an authority.
You have provided no evidence that ocean pH is affected by CO2, because there is no evidence. There is only model-based conjecture. All of your purported “evidence” amounts to conjecture. It is not based on empirical, testable, reproducible evidence. The icing on the cake is the link to Skeptical Pseudo-Science, the agenda-driven propaganda blog written by a cartoonist. Pf-f-f-t.
Willis Eschenbach totally deconstructed the evidence-free ocean acidity claims in this article. PH changes so much during the day, location and seasons that there is no real world, testable evidence showing any pH change due to human CO2 emissions. The ocean has essentially infinite buffering capacity, and it could easily handle a quadrupling of atmospheric CO2 without affecting its pH.
The planet’s oceans are not “acidifying” because of a few more molecules of a harmless trace gas. It’s just a scare tactic, like CAGW. But when all you’ve got is conjecture. models, and labeling me with the d-word, I guess that’s the hand you have to play. Unfortunately for you, there is no evidence to support your pH beliefs.
GregO says:
March 24, 2011 at 9:26 pm
Somebody answer this humble question:
What is it about the English speaking world that captures our imagination about man-made CO2 destroying the world. It isn’t happening according to script – but the play goes on in Britain, USA (less so probably because we never seem to “get it” anyway), Canada, and most acutely, Australia? Why are we so irrational.
Man-made CO2 seems to be accounting for just about nothing. No sea level rise. No increased storm activity. No unprecedented warming. No crises. No crises at all. All crises in fact, being as a result of poor political leadership.
Are we collectively mad?
Not irrational – the anglophone world is the essence of western civilization and culture. Who saved Europe in WW I? Who saved Europe and Asia again in WW II? Who defeated the USSR in the cold war. We are the number one threat to the existence of any totalitarian state and we are therefore under constant attack on many levels by those who lust for total dominion over humanity.
Shevva says
For the UK and OZ it’s a race to the bottom.
Trouble for the Ozzies is they don’t have help like us in the EU.
Yes UK may well reach the bottom before us Aussies because we also have Mother Nature on our side, demolishing the dire predictions of our AGW’s left, right and centre. They predict drought, she sends rain. They predict empty water supplies, she fills ’em up. They said no more skiing, she sent bumper snow, they said hottest decade, she said “nope, not this one” etc etc.
Perhaps Tim thinks predicting conditions a thousand years out is a safer bet?
She is a real pain the
Smokey says:
March 25, 2011 at 5:03 pm
Mike,
Your pnas “study” is by Susan Solomon, a chemist with an agenda. And I note that she has no background in oceanography – the same exact criticism you leveled at David Middleton. Is that Susan’s picture on the right side of the pnas page? Anyway, her paper is based on a model. Models are not evidence. It’s just an appeal to an authority.
Another way of saying this…
A model is in itself a theoretical construct, as a professional software engineer I can attest that any computer program cannot tell you more than the assumptions of the programmer.
So by relying on models – climate scientists don’t actually test anything – you need real world empirical measurements for that – like the way physics is done.
I.e. Theory + Model = Theory, Theory + Experiment = Science.
I live in Australia and it makes me sick to hear on a daily basis such totally illogical ramblings, rants, dogma and blatant misunderstandings on climate change. Flannery pretends to be a reasonable guy but he clearly hasn’t challenged, as the good scientist he projects himself to be, any of the science on which the doomsday forecasts have been made. As a scientist he should have challenged it, rigorously, before becoming climate change commissioner. More importantly, he should continue to challenge. To close his mind to further developments such as the Briffa deception that is unfolding and the lack of significant AGW outcomes shows he lack scientific ethics. In Australia we are expected, no told, to accept the primary school level argument that we have to pay an enormous amount of tax, just in case the worst case AGW happens, even though not much of the money will go to mitigating the problem of AGW (it will be redistributed). Yesterday the Prime Minister warned that the coasts of Australia would be inundated by 2100. I feel sick again.
Snotrocket says:
March 25, 2011 at 9:36 am
I was so going to stay out of this, not being an Oz, and all, but then eadler at 8:01 am said:
“I think Watts (or Bolt?) is talking nonsense here. If we stopped emissions today, our grandchildren would be happy. The climate of today’s earth is what we are seeking to preserve. to the best of our knowledge, if the global temperature goes up only a little it should be OK. What we are concerned about are temperature increases in excess of 2C, which would be associated with big changes in regional climates in a short time, with large scale extinctions of species, as well as displacement of many millions of people.”
The emphasis above is mine: to hi-light the conditionals that eadler usually applies to his/her arguments.
I want to know who made eadler God? How did He decide what the ideal climate is that ‘we are trying to preserve’? And how does he/she know that things will ‘be OK’ if the ‘temperature only goes up a little’? We are so in need of your guidance eadler, oh great one!
And finally, where in hell (ah – it must have been there!) do you get the rise to be 2C? (And in what period of time is that?) AFAIK, the only place this number is bandied about is in Al Gore’s head. Tell me, oh wise one, what will kill more people, 0.7C increase in a century, or a 30 year cold spell?
(And for those thinking of a name for eadler and others, I still prefer the one I heard over a year ago: ‘warm-mongers’!)
Snotrocket,
I think there is an internal contradiction in your post. You are right, I like to apply conditions to my arguments, in contrast to God, who knows everthing for sure, and would never apply conditions to what he would say, assuming there is a God. So it is clear that I don’t think I am God. But there I go again, applying conditions to what I say.
If we want to avoid dislocations and strife, we should avoid rapid climate change. This is not an idea I or Al Gore invented. The US Defense Department under Bush recognized this.
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB932.pdf
I really couldn’t care less what name you give me. The fact that you do this shows your intellectual bankruptcy.
I didn’t invent the 2C threshold for deleterious climate change. It was proposed by the EU on the basis of projections. Some people would prefer a lower limit such as 1.5C.
http://views.washingtonpost.com/climate-change/post-carbon/2009/12/copenhagens_2_degree_target.html
Mike Lorrey says:
March 24, 2011 at 9:46 pm
‘’’’’It is a long standing tradition in english speaking culture . . . [edit out] . . . there is an inherent refusal to accept the idea that the world is capricious, random, and that nature is simply *natural* without persona. “””
“””The modern AGW movement is thus inherently influenced by these puritanical christian archetypes.”””
———–
Mike Lorrey,
Thank you for launching us on this train of thought.
I think you must consider, in order to adequately put AGW ideology in perspective, a much broader context of human religious/mythical patterns than just those of English speaking countries all who happen to be Christian dominated societies. Comparitive mytho-religious studies show many common patterns of mass acceptance of modes of crisis thought throughout all civilizations back to pre-history.
I would rather put the discussion in terms of whether, at any given period, a culture is dominated by the principal of freedom of independent thought or dominated by the tendency of some enforced common belief system. I think in the latter you have the fundamental basis for tendencies of fear, anxiety and fanaticism leading to ideologies like the CAGW one.
Having said that, I do think the American irrationalist tradition in academia is a significant contributing factor for promoting the irrationalist component of the CAGW movement in the whole world.
John
here is the full interview with the quote at the beginning
if we cut emissions today global temperatures are not likely to drop for about 1000 years
Feel sorry for Tim, he has been given a political hot ember, but can he talk!
I used to attend his public lectures at the ANU and when talking about flora and fauna, he was always very interesting. For example he opened my eyes to the fact that carnivorous plants thrive in Australia when soil nutrition and rainfall are low.
Thanks, Adam (above), listened to the interview, and his technique when cornered is not to stop and give a considered answer, but to keep blabbering away like a verbal battering-ram until the time is up.
AB did well in getting his questions in.
While Flannery’s quote was remarkable – I personally liked the Geelong Conference last night on live T.V.
It was a talk given by ‘Julia’s Committee’ that is to be pricing Carbon. What a delight they all were… Especially the ‘female’ scientist gal – I thought she was extra special when she and her cohort to her left agreed that now ‘they’ were the only scientists interested in furthering public information on ‘Climate Change’… In fact, the little darlings said that ‘all the other scientists’ have gone back DOWN THEIR HOLES with their little…little… it wasn’t ‘beakers’…but, it was yet another word that made all of you look and sound ‘totally ridiculous’ on Australian T.V. (no big deal, really)
The two of them – quite the pair, actually – nodded in complete agreement with each other as the other spoke. They told the obviously ‘hand picked’ audience that the consensus IS IN and HAS BEEN FOR MONTHS, and truly YEARS – Actually!
That dynamic duo went on and on about ‘their peers’ – who, they said ‘never liked dealing with the public anyhow’ so, now ‘they’ve gone into their boroughs’ ‘doing whatever it is that they do’ – and it made you all sound like a bunch of mindless, ignorant dolts, frankly. Real classy, huh? So much for the new religion of Science. Congratulations in advance, Gentlemen – I think ‘science’ just sunk to a new low having them out on stage – representing you.
Here’s a link I just found. But, I’d recommend you find the whole conference to get the full impact of what they had to say about ‘you’. What they ‘go on’ about rates up there with what Flannery just said. They all must be cousins, perhaps.
http://www.surfcoastnews.com.au/2011/03/26/first-climate-commission-community-forum-held-in-geelong/
C.L. Thorpe
4 eyes says:
March 25, 2011 at 6:14 pm
_______
I agree. It has given me a certain amount of pleasure, to read in ‘The Age’ (Melbourne) online, that the Labor lot in NSW seem to have been given a complete drubbing in the election.
Lets not forget that Mr Flannery also came up with the idea of pumping sulphur into the atmosphere to block the sun.
http://www.news.com.au/climate-plan-could-change-sky-colour/story-e6frfkp9-1111116384553
Acid rain anyone I thought we had already done that
Steve Koch@12.06am March 25
I agree.
The following are just a few of the reasons that make a reasonable person suspect that our politicians and their media facilitators are less than honest in their climate change concern and the hysteria they’re trying to whip up amongst the rest of us .
In Australia—
Our former [ Labor] Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd,[ who had managed, in 2007 , with the help of Al Gore and Bono, to defeat our realist Liberal Prime Minister, John Howard ]—– was elected predominantly on his climate change alarmism.
He later had to be shamed into letting go of the gas guzzler he was driving even while preaching to us, and now flies the world 24/7 every week of every month with his entourage as Foreign Minister, while the rest of us are told we must ride bikes and catch buses etc.
With no apparent worries about the dreaded sea level rises, he recently bought a new waterfront beach house, emulating that other former politician who’s also terrorizing the world about sea level rises etc— his mate , Al Gore.
Instead of looking into every possible action to mitigate, our new PM and her party, are hell bent only on a carbon ‘pollution’ tax and setting up a carbon trading scheme—- and all information on challenges to, and developments in climate science that might show it to be unwarranted—- including all the information about the Climategate emails, inquiries etc—- is suppressed.
If CO2 is such a terrible ‘pollution’, it would seem to be foolhardy in the extreme to be planning to sequester it under our feet, where it might foul aquifers, and in Australia, might destroy our much-needed Great Artesian Basin .
But they’re depending on CCS, and don’t appear to know or care what the consequences might be.
There is absolutely no mention here of the research by Drew Shindell of NASA, that concludes that 50% of the Arctic warming is caused by black carbon.
Shindell’s advice —
[ “We will have very little leverage over climate in the next couple of decades if we’re just looking at carbon dioxide,” Shindell said. “If we want to try to stop the Arctic summer sea ice from melting completely over the next few decades, we’re much better off looking at aerosols and ozone.”]
—–has fallen on deaf ears as far as our government is concerned , and amongst alarmists everywhere, as far as I can see.
I would think they’d be exhorting the governments involved to get that work done, but no—– almost complete silence—and forests are burning still—while they wring their hands and lecture us all about the Arctic melt.
You might think too, that if they really do think the situation is as dire as they claim, they’d be willing to consider the possibility [ not that it’s something I would want] that we in Australia might need to have nuclear power in the mix , as most other countries do —–but it has been and still is, political suicide in Australia,[ as John Howard found out in 2007], for a non-Labor politician to mention even the vaguest possibility of investigating the viability of even thorium reactors down the track.
I agree with your last point about governments that hate their country too.
Politicians on the Left in Australia have always been embarrassed about our country—always wanting to reconstruct it in the image of some European country—and/or hand over our sovereignty to the UN.
For many years they had a plan called ‘Australia Reconstructed’, which would have ‘transformed’ Australia in the image of the then Socialist Sweden.
Australians in general have become progressively more sceptical on CO2-induced GW over the last three years.
eadler says: March 25, 2011 at 9:02 pm
Eadler, I’m really struggling with the ‘intellectual bankruptcy’ thingy – because I called you a name (God?)? But I didn’t call you God, I just asserted that you were acting like you thought you were.
Anyway, where did you dig up the ‘rapid climate change’? Is that a new version of AGW/CAGW/CC/warming that you greens have come up with?
But, overall, your argument falls when you start to quote the wonderfully undemocratic EU – of all people! You (eadler) didn’t invent the 2C ‘threshold for deleterious for climate change’. It was, you say ‘proposed’ (under what scientific aegis was what?) by the EU on the basis of ‘projections’ (do you mean models?). Some people (who?) would prefer a lower limit such as 1.5C (based on what, FFS?).
Who’s the intellectual bankrupt now?
For Mike Lorry et al re: the “why do people believe this stuff?” sub-thread.
I think we can be confident that it goes back further than Christianity. For those interested, investigate the concept of Participation Mystique. Here is a nice definition:
Participation mystique. A term derived from anthropology and the study of primitive psychology, denoting a mystical connection, or identity, between subject and object.
Here are a couple of links to get you started:
http://pimoebius.com/participation_mystique.htm
http://www.suite101.com/content/what-is-participation-mystique-a137096
Participation Mystique can be thought of as an evolutionary psychological analogy to the physical evolution example of Darwins Rock Pigeon (or striped horses).
http://www.classicreader.com/book/107/42/
Obviously we cannot think about the activation of latent unconscious psychic material without reference to Jung. The Portable Jung is a good introduction (for $10 and readily available) and if you like that you can move deeper into the collected works.
http://www.amazon.com/Portable-Jung-Library/dp/0140150706
Finally, here is one more book to try: Jean Gebser’s Ever Present Origin
http://www.amazon.com/Ever-Present-Origin-Foundations-Aperspectival/dp/0821407694/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1301154167&sr=1-1
Check out this website for an introduction to Gebser:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:bpa16XmDiyUJ:www.gebser.org/publications/pdf/introphiljgebser.pdf+Jean+Gebser&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk
Big topic this…… we would probably need another version of WUWT to give justice to the psychological side of CAGW. (Anthony & Mods – this is not a request btw – you are doing a great job as is!).
Anyway, for those interested, hopefully this adds to your resources, and, have fun with it……
Not a snow balls chance in Hell that we will return to preindustrial co2 levels. Why are they even talking about it? Same people who are running out to buy potassium iodine pills. They gonna have to pick their poison.
Er – hang on a minute folks – what is this ‘system’ which is overburdened’ with CO2..?
Is he talking about the atmosphere..?
Has the atmosphere said: ‘Jeez, Tim – I’m fair overburdened with CO2 – d’you reckon you Aussies could cut it down a smidgeon – as it is it’ll take a thousand years to get the stuff off me back..?’
Methinks we are ‘overburdened’ with halfwits, talking through an orifice unsuited to the purpose…
So…if plants are made of carbon (and other stuff), and if we grow more of it, and it grows faster (because of more CO2)…it doesn’t use up carbon from the atmosphere? It makes its own carbon, through some kind of plant-fusion organelle?
Or does the extra heat the carbon trapped (cough) just hang around in the air for no good reason for 1,000 years? So it’s well behaved time-released heat? Where was this well behaved heat when half the U.S. was buried in piles of snow this winter? Does this well behaved heat also go through hibernation cycles? Or perhaps the plant-fusion organelles are trapping it… hmmm
I also like Bolt’s new one-liner: Earth hour was lights out for the Left (or SLT).
You ain’t seen nothing yet!
In the first edition of Tim Flannery’s book, “The Weather Makers: the History and Future Impact of Climate Change” (you can find it in google books), he explains how telekinesis affects climate. An example is, “There is one remarkable aspect of the great aerial ocean that has only recently been appreciated – its telekinesis. The last time you heard of telekinesis was probably when Uri Geller was bending spoons, but the term does have a valid scientific definition. It means ‘movement at a distance without a material connection’, and in the case of the atmosphere telekinesis allows changes to manifest themselves simultaneously in distant regions.”
This is from our (Austrlia’s) head of its Climate Commission. The expert our federal government has appointed to lead a commision to teach us all about the science of climate and global warming. His first degree was in arts majoring in English and his PhD was in long dead marsupials (also found with google – perhaps they will make that harder to find now they are going to start spreading warmist propaganda). So it is not hard to understand why he has problems with the science. What is worrying is that we do not appear to have moved much beyond the middle ages where those in power relied on advice(?) to blame witches and had them burnt for causing global cooling.
The statement by Tim Flannery proves beyond any doubt that Gillard, her government, the Greens led by Soap Box Bob, Flannery and Ganaut are attempting to perpetrate the con of the century on Australian citizens. It’s about time the gagged members of the Labor Party spoke out against this monumental scam… do it for the good of the party at least… otherwise you will suffer a bigger defeat than the NSW party.
John W.;
so ‘teleconnections’ became ‘telekinesis’? What a thought! It’s spooky action at a distance, or sumthin.
If Mr. F. weren’t utterly immune to embarrassment and/or shame …
Stop all human activity NOW!
We should bring him over to England – the Met office can’t even tell us with any accuracy what the weather will be like this afternoon, and here is a guy predicting milleniums!
1,000 years ?????
out of context ! What catastrophic event 1,000 years ago caused today’s so called warming ? Nero burning Rome ?
GregO says:
March 24, 2011 at 9:26 pm
“Somebody answer this humble question:
What is it about the English speaking world that captures our imagination about man-made CO2 destroying the world. It isn’t happening according to script – but the play goes on in Britain, USA (less so probably because we never seem to “get it” anyway), Canada, and most acutely, Australia? Why are we so irrational. …………….”
Greg the answer to your humble question, is TAX (for politicians to play with)
GregO says:
……..
Are we collectively mad?
The short answer is Yes, and we always have been.
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
from Charles Mackay’s famous book: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
@Mike Lorrey
“It is a long standing tradition in english speaking culture, going back to the Salem witch trials and beyond, where there is an inherent refusal to accept the idea that the world is capricious, random, and that nature is simply *natural* without persona. ”
Believe it or not England is an English speaking nation. I cannot think of any examples from English history to back up your long diatribe against the Christian view of nature. Perhaps if I searched hard enough I might find the odd one or two in the past 1,600 years.
Turning to the United States, I did not realise that the Salem witch trials had anything to do with the Puritans’ view of nature but my knowledge of the subject is rather sparse so as far as I know you could be right. However it is noticable that you did not produce any evidence to back up your assertions.
“… for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.”
Matthew 5:45