By Dr. Benny Peiser of The GWPF
Politicians, today, have predictably “walked away” from the issue of global warming. In retrospect we have to ask why this mass illusion, the transition to “a new ecological society” imploded and fell off the teleprompters, off the front pages, and out of the seemingly endless TV special reports on threatened polar bears and collapsing ice cliffs. How could this all disappear so fast? –Andrew McKillop, The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 28 June 2012
To be sure, the serried ranks of corporate profiteers from the global warming surge are still in the “shock” phase, following the effective collapse of what was going to be so big. Their business models had to be changed, on paper and in press releases at least. Unwinding their trading and investment positions, re-jigging their portfolios will take time – so for a while longer Big Business still plays carbon correct. Rather surely, however, corporate spin doctors are now at work to reconstruct the past in order to cancel the global warming business future. –Andrew McKillop, The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 28 June 2012
As the climate-change theory crumbles, expect its supporters to be more vocal in its defence, more insistent that the science is ironclad. Like the cultish followers of any faddish religion when it nears the end of its fashionableness, they will proclaim their views even more vociferously and denounce more forcefully all those who disagree. But increasingly, their warnings of impending doom and their character attacks on their opponents will be performed before empty houses, as in Rio. –Lorne Gunter, Toronto Sun, 27 June 2012
The anti-global-warming crusade against carbon-based energy is the latest assault on progress and improvement. Zubrin is correct to call the climate-change movement a “global antihuman cult.” Its assaults against dissent, embrace of messianic leaders, and apocalyptic scenarios reveal a debased religious sensibility rather than scientific rigor. —Bruce Thornton, City Journal, June/July 2012
The paper by Schneider et al 2012 has the clever idea of looking at the temperatures of lakes and reservoirs around the world. They provide data for 169 of the largest inland water bodies world- wide using three satellite-borne instruments. Together they provide daily to near-daily data from 1981 through to the present, allowing them to calculate 25-year trends of nighttime summertime/dry-season surface temperature. My preliminary calculations suggest that there is no statistically significant trend post-1997. Hence an alternate description of their findings is that the world’s large bodies of water show the well known standstill of the past decade or so seen in global temperatures. –David Whitehouse, The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 27 June 2012
Between 1985 and 2011, global electricity generation increased by about 450 terawatt-hours per year. That’s the equivalent of adding about one Brazil (which used 485 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2010) to the electricity sector every year. And the International Energy Agency expects global electricity use to continue growing by about one Brazil per year through 2035. –Robert Bryce, National Review, 27 June 2012
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That’s all well and good, but the EPA and other agencies around the globe will continue to implement the de-carbonization plan until voters elect officials that will put a stop to it.
We are not alone.
I really do not think they have given up yet. There is too much money and political clout riding on CAGW.
The more clearly these big egos perceive the demise of their attention-worthiness, the more dangerous they will become. Expect some seriously big tantrums.
I think the public reaction to these Green initiatives and to Global Warming when it is frigid and then Climate Change is viewed as endangering the stealth campaign that shows much more promise. For example I think a big part of the answer for what was going on at UVa with Sullivan’s ouster and rehiring and hiding Mann’s emails relates to this “$12 million Contemplative Science Center at UVa. http://www.uvatibetcenter.org/?page_id=5760
Those of you who have read what I have written about the Future Earth Alliance can see I keep referring to the manager, IGBP, in Sweden. IGBP stands for International Biosphere-Geosphere Programme. There are 3 spheres in this all-encompassing theory though. The missing one is the mental system– what was called the noosphere. Gorbachev wrote about it and so does Teilhard de Chardin. It’s a goofy word but it is the third leg of the stool. It is less about rational thought and more about emotion and feeling as the dominant intellectual response.
That Contemplative Sciences Center is straight out of this whole theory of consciousness so you can ask yourself if UVa having a Center celebrating the Noosphere approach and piloting it as a transformative intersection of learning in higher ed might be incentive to hide those emails. Which of course related to the other 2 legs of that stool. It also might be troublesome to a Board of Visitors to be pushing such an “innovative” transformation to the various reknowned programs.
I have been writing a good bit about the social and emotional emphasis of so much of these P-12 and higher ed education reforms and this is related. It alters how people think and really what their reflex is in framing reality. I was not going to talk about the noosphere because it really does sound out there even though it’s incontrovertibly a widely desired theory for humanity. But that was before I became aware of that center yesterday and saw just how well it fits with the known facts and theories.
Heads Up.
Not only that, but a new study has found;
“Antarctic ice shelves not melting at all, new field data show.”
“Twenty-year-old models which have suggested serious ice loss in the eastern Antarctic have been compared with reality for the first time – and found to be wrong, so much so that it now appears that no ice is being lost at all.”
“The team’s results show that water temperatures are far lower than computer models predicted …”
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/25/antarctic_ice_not_melting/
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/pip/2012GL051012.shtml
At least it’s a start of sanity returning.
The trouble with this continuous use of “no trend since 1997” line is that it seems likely we will sometime soon return to the next-broader trend of slow warming. The opponent will then say “Told you so”, and rightfully so.
Obama out. Worse president ever! Just a puppet for an extremely fascist, corrupt political elite.
It needs to become plain to politicians that it is political suicide to promote ‘carbon emissions’ cuts, however it is dressed up, and indeed, this is beginning to happen as ordinary citizens become aware that elitist save-the-planet feel-good fantasies do nothing but hugely increase everyone’s utilities bills …
The knowledge that the power company is going to shut off your supply in a fortnight, concentrates the person’s mind wonderfully.
KevinM says:
June 28, 2012 at 6:32 am
The trouble with this continuous use of “no trend since 1997″ line is that it seems likely we will sometime soon return to the next-broader trend of slow warming. The opponent will then say “Told you so”, and rightfully so.
____________________
If “they” are right, then mankind’s emissions of CO2 have prevented how much cooling?
Would not the well- understood horrors of global cooling thus have been averted?
If they are right and the sun and all other possible factors pale in significance to the effects of increasing CO2, then why is the trend flat- lined?
They are making a new push now that middle America is in an early summer heatwave.
Of course, they tried the same thing last year when Texas and the south central USA were experiencing a heatwave and drought and despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth, the public remained unpersuaded. So the “trend” is definitely not moving in the AGW cultists’ direction.
The judicial branch may continue to provide support for climate-change policy. The courts are now very political and too often decide cases along party lines. Check who appointed the judge, and you’ll have a good idea of what decision they will make on an issue. Very sad.
My bias is there should be a clear meaning to the law, an original meaning that doesn’t change with time or political winds. Judges should not represent popular opinion. The Rule of Law should be predictable and stable. Congress is able to adjust laws to suit the times, not judges. And when we need more fundamental change, we can amend the Constitution. It is not the role of the courts to make new law from the bench. Who will oversee and restrain the courts if they won’t restrain themselves?
Federal judges have lifetime appointments. The Senate approves these presidential appointments, and we vote for senators. This problem is further evidence that the 17th amendment was a mistake. Senators represent the states, and state legislatures should have their power restored to select senators. Perhaps then states will have more power and there will be a natural limit to federalism. If a senator fails a state, that senator can be replaced by the state legislature.
Not all states are as nuts as California.
http://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2010/02/17/repeal-the-17th-amendment-restore-liberty/
Robin, are you saying Sullivan is Tibetan so it’s ok cause she and Warren were collaborating minorities?
oops! /sarc
I feel you’re all too correct about this. Honestly, I was dismayed by an earlier WUWT post that showed a carbon market with a value of over $170 billion. That’s a huge pot of cash. This is guaranteed to attract the very worst sorts of humanity that will do anything, stop at nothing, to get as big a chunk of that as they possibly can. It’s inevitable. They will not go quietly.
In the UK, the Climate Change Act is costing us £18 billion per year and we are building wind farms at an ever increasing rate. In the next 5 years we will close most of our ‘filthy’ coal fired power stations and the Prime Minister says we will be one of the greenest countries in the world.
Climate change policies are still flourishing here. (Oh and the country is already broke).
The hypothesis may be in deep trouble but the funding/political/agenda grinds on. The world still needs “saving” and there are plenty of fanatics, willing and able to perform their messianic duty. GK
@Robin
About the “noosphere”, some in the world of spiritual development are saying, look if you want to include the noosphere, you have to take into account what developmental psychologists say, and what some of the models there say, is that humanity has gone through several major cultural stages, and several of those stages still exist around the world today, and those stages can’t be skipped. So you can’t expect people in Kenya to give up their aspirations to becoming urbanised and educated and having access to lots of electricity. You can’t expect people to jump from poverty under authoritarian dictatorships in failed states embedded in conflicts, to suddenly becoming sensitive egalitarian world-centric devotees of the environment. It. Won’t. Happen. It took the West hundreds of years to make that transition and development.
If you have a hard life, and are poor, then survival needs come first, the need to work hard enough to get your kids educated in a school comes first, the need to have healthcare comes first, and “the environment” is so far off the radar, it really doesn’t register at all. The Western environmentalists generally don’t understand that modernisation and urbanisation and industrialisation and democracy made living conditions sooo good for them, that they were born healthy enough to wonder, what more is there to life? And so they began to wonder about giving rather than taking, about doing something for the planet. But 95% of the planet doesn’t have that mindset, because they are born in harder conditions. That’s the point of these developmental psychological models — people are adapted to the life conditions. Poor people ruin the environment far faster than the well off who can afford efficient technologies and infrastructure and afford to care.
Another point from these models is that these cultural stages for nations take generations, and for individuals can take decades. This is why the moment they said “we have 4 years to save the planet” it was blindingly obvious that this message would go nowhere. In 4 years you can barely do anything, let alone change the basic moral worldview and convictions of billions of people. Insane.
An interesting point from the developmental models is that a new culture is starting to emerge that goes beyond the 60s boomers-who-want-to-save-the-world. This new culture is emerging that basically says, you have to accept that 7 billion people out there don’t agree with you, and that life is too complex to predict, or control, so you have to be adaptable, flexible, open minded, and have a sense of humour. You need to be quite clear that there are brutal terrorists, ethnic cleansing wars, vast swathes of the planet that are basically racist, empires rising and in decline, chaotic stock markets, disruptive technologies, ecosystems in constant change (normal), religious clashes (including the peaceful ones), idealistic environmentalists and egalitarians who do more damage than they realise as they keep dismantling infrastructure, systemic shocks, fragilities, as well as accepting that the whole thing is in multiple stages, populated by people with multiple world views who can’t change those world views and are entitled to their views, adapting to their life conditions, and your place in it is very very tiny.
Robin find a worm,
Early birds salute the dawn.
Sun Salutations.
===========
Stefan-
I am not quite following you. My problem with with this paradigm change in consciousness that combines emotion and reason is that rational thought loses. If I want to get involved with Eastern religious views of consciousness and I am an adult. That’s my choice.
To rebuild education in the West around traditions that challenge the primacy of reason is to gut much of what allowed the West to thrive. It is certainly what individualism is grounded upon. And the unprecedented Western prosperity is premised on personal freedom and economic freedom.
One of the documents that got a lot of play about the time of the Planet Under Pressure conference was a 2003 dissertation from a UK Professor, Stephen Sterling. It was called “Whole Systems Thinking as a Basis for Paradigm Change in Education: Explorations in the Context of Sustainability.” The fact that it was apparently cited a lot for support of what was being pushed in London in March is very alarming.
But it is consistent with what is being pushed through this Contemplative Sciences Center now at UVa and it’s consistent with work being done at Harvard College of Ed by Howard Gardner (Mr Multiple Intelligences) and Robert Kegan.
It makes me uncomfortable when techniques being pushed in K-12 or higher ed turn out to be based on humanity developing a “participative consciousness.”
No thanks. I’d rather my child learn real algebra and grammar and maybe study Shakespeare.
As a parent and taxpayer this is nothing to substitute out of sight because you have a monopoly on what gets taught, how, and why.
That participative consciousness would go a long way towards getting Rio+20 implemented without a treaty. Then where will we be?
The hype is dying down, but the consequences of policy decisions driven by a scam that exploited unsubstantiated fears and hysteria are real and remain.
Andrew McKillop’s article at http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article35357.html addresses investors. It focuses on their interests and identifies that raking in hundreds of billions of dollars, even trillions of dollars, based on climate change fears is no longer a viable enterprise.
Nevertheless, the end-consumers who were the source of those profits and paid for them all along will keep on paying for many years, for decades. They pay for higher utility prices directly and indirectly through higher taxes and higher consumer prices for goods and services.
The end-consumers will shell out for higher prices for food and consumer goods, for cars, for housing, for everything they need and use; to recover the higher prices for energy used in manufacturing, transporting and using everything they buy.
In the meantime, the investors will move on to new and innovative scams for sucking profits out of the pockets of the unsuspecting, gullible working masses who will continue paying for it all, while the mainstream media will keep on being quiet about it, thereby protecting the interests of the politicians and investors who make their living from pulling the wool over the eyes of Joe Six-Pack who is being fleeced.
The seven Green parties of Germany, two of which form the government, but it’s really not important which ones, have just agreed to continue subsidizing new solar installations (and of course, pay the guaranteed 20 years for the existing ones) with the slightly reduced rate of 18 Eurocents a kWh; that’s about 22.5 US cents.
They will continue to do so until 55 GWpeak are reached; currently we are at about half of that.
So the fleecing of the ratepayer continues. Expect two follow up interventions:
– subsidation of energy intensive industries to keep them in the country
– subsidation of poor households who can’t pay the exploding rates anymore.
As none of the parties is CO2AGw-skeptic, the issue is never debated.
So, if you’re a warmist scientist and you’re fearing for your future in a hostile world, come to cloudy Germany, warmism is our state religion.
DirkH says:
June 28, 2012 at 9:33 am
….So the fleecing of the ratepayer continues….
CWAG might not be as effective a tool as it once was, but the Marxist dream still lives on. They will just move on to something else for awhile in their drive to destroy capitalism, and civilization along with it. Anyway, with almost every public school graduate having the sever cognitive damage that Marxist education theory produces, it will take more then just the complete discrediting of the theory of CAGW, to quite the noise machine.