Josh provides this updated cartoon which was originally intended to be a Friday Funny last week. The reason for this cartoon about the Union of Concerned Scientists will become clear in a couple of days.
Josh
For those of you who don’t know who Kenji is, he is a distinguished member of the Union of Concerned Scientists, see: Friday Funny – The newest member of the Union of Concerned Scientists
The suspense, the suspense.
Anthony, if memory serves, Kenji also represented the Union of Concerned Scientists on the WUWT-TV special.
Let me guess… Union of Confused Scientists determine chicken feathers cause global warming????
Your very own DJ here…… I’ve let my membership lapse, but my good friends and fellow “concerned scientists” still send me emails full of wondrous claims from time to time.
…. I’m truly looking forward to seeing this new revelation!!
Thanks Anthony for letting Kenji be amongst such esteemed company!
I fondly remember the Union of Concerned Scientists making the media rounds back in the ’80’s declaring missile defence a physical impossibility. “It would be like attempting to hit a bullet with a bullet” they told everyone who would listen. Now of course, anti-missile missile systems are routinely deployed…
On a more serious note I do find it contemptible that any advocacy group attempts to use science as a basis for claiming that their political opinions are more certain than those from other camps.
I hope the Union becomes important. I read what Donna had to say about the USGCRP members and I had tracked them last week when I was writing this piece on the alliance among Paul Ehrlich’s vision, the NCA assessment draft, and the global push involving education, K-12 and higher ed. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/hyping-catastrophe-to-eliminate-the-supposed-mismatch-between-human-minds-and-the-world-we-inhabit/
I have thought a lot about this today as I am getting ready to write again by what Ehrlich means by foresight knowledge and how it limits actual knowledge of anything not directly experienced. Our governments and the tax exempt foundations all over the world are using the spending and taxing powers to destroy knowledge itself.
They attract the naive or the stupid or the greedy as their long term advocates. But they are living off the rest of us or what knowledge produced in the past for everyone’s benefit.
It’s incredibly lucrative for each of them to be Chicken Little.
The problem is, we call these alarmist and hucksters silly, but they are very serious. Their lies have been exposed and their meal ticket is falling apart yet they continue to try to beat the dead horse called AGW down the road. They have the help of a compliant media, bureaucratic regulators and an ill informed public. They might be silly to us, but they are deadly serious.
“… will become clear in a couple of days.” Did Kenji, as a Concerned Scientist, receive advance information and let the cat out of the bag?
Did Kenji have anything to do with Richard Windsor being “put down” ? [Smug smiley face].
“I fondly remember the Union of Concerned Scientists making the media rounds back in the ’80′s declaring missile defence a physical impossibility. “It would be like attempting to hit a bullet with a bullet” they told everyone who would listen.”
Oh that brings back memories. Back in the early 80’s I was a proud leftist, agitating against “Star Wars” (AKA the Strategic Defense Initiative) and in support of the Nuclear Freeze. In 80 I even voted to re-elect Jimmy Carter. I had forgotten UCS was behind some of this.
Reagan was going to lead us into WW III and destroy the economy blah blah blah. I had bought into it all. But by the late 80’s I had become a conservative. I realized the Left had been wrong about everything. Every prediction they made failed to materialize. It forced me to examine why and when I did I discovered either downright dishonesty, or a worldview that simply didn’t match reality.
So I think it is important to keep hammering on the lack of warming and all of these failed predictions from the CAGW faithful. People will take note. It will change minds.
Clay Marley jan 20,2013 at 7.06 pm
I had a similar dual experience. Back in the 60’s we were told that the world would run out of petrochemicals by the year 2000.When this was clearly not happening I asked my uncle, a chemical engineer, to explain it.His answer was that the predictions were made on known reserves of oil.It was then that I realised that the scientists had not bothered to look for reserves or simply did not know, as those who did had not revealed the size of the reserves for financial reasons. In Australia there was always the Bass Strait subsidy to make sure exploration for oil continued on our continental shelf.
So at no time had the scientific community revealed the limits of accuracy of their claims.The claims were bogus.
Watching ‘an Inconvenient Truth’ I had a sense of Deja Vu, and decided to research climate.
This site helped me greatly to understand heat better, the greenhouse effect and the climate model that we live on an enormous heat engine.
Whenever I run into warmists, in areas I have more than a passing knowledge, I find few that blog are scientists, or have a clear idea of scientific method.
Some seem to look up Wikipedia and then produce an opinion.
In another thread it has been pointed out that some clerics are uniting to stop greenhouse warming and see burning fossil fuels as a sin.
In that context it would assist that the facts of climate, whatever they may be, are disseminated by those who blog on religious sites, particularly Catholic ones.
It was once asked ‘Can forty million Frenchmen be wrong?
There are about a billion Catholics, many of them living in third world countries.
It would be preferable if they do not get it wrong.
I tried to join my three English Setters and Brittany Spaniel. They knocked the application back. Maybe it was because the credit card was from The Bank of Muddy Creek, in the name of Albert Gore.
Go Go Go Go Kenji Go!
Dr. Kenji could become a big mover and shaker in the Union of Concerned Scientists. I would consider signing our cat ‘Snappy Boy’ up as he is very intelligent, but I don’t want to give the bastards any money, with which to do further damage.
How have weather extremes been lately, Dr. Kenji?
“Ruff!”
And how were weather extremes before all this Global Warming?
“Ruff!”
Anthony, you ought to see if Kenji can get a speaking engagement before this esteemed body….. perhaps to present his latest paper?
“In that context it would assist that the facts of climate, whatever they may be, are disseminated by those who blog on religious sites, particularly Catholic ones.”
If that is the case the infallibility of the Church will be called into question. Why would they be doing that to themselves?
Strange as it may seem, but I experienced the sky falling once. It was very scary. I can understand why people are afraid of it. For those that have experienced it, they will never want to experience it again, or even wish it on their worst enemy.
What surprised me was that scientists wouldn’t take me seriously, even when I presented them with some of the pieces.
So if people are warning you about the sky falling, take head and do whatever is in your power to stop it happening again.
“Bullet with a bullet
The guy I bought my dog from was stationed on the R.K. Turner. They were quite proud to have sucessfully tested the LEAP warhead on an SM-2ER.
Today, the Turner, and all the other Leahy Cruisers are gone. “obsolete.”
Too bad. That was one kick arse platform.
I see GISS.
Kenji – respect!!!
The oldest shaggy-dog-story I know:
Guy enters the tavern with his dog and tells the proprietor, “My dog can talk!”
Proprietor says, “Let’s see about that. Hey, Pooch, how’s business these days?”
The dog says, “Ruff!”
Prop: “What’s this over our heads?”
Dog: “Roof!”
“Who’s the greatest hitter in history?”
“Ruth!”
The proprietor throws dog and guy out. As they pick themselves up from the dust, the dog says to the guy, “Maybe I should have said Willie Mays.”
Oh dear. It appears there’s been a bit of a falling out. All is not well in CAGW land. It’s a dog-eat-dog world.
Will Nitschke says:
Exactly, and worth repeating. There’s ethical questions and scientific questions and aesthetic questions; these are are three different domains (The Good, the True, and the Beautiful).
We keep getting activists trying to impose their ethical views as if they were factual scientific ones. All that does is corrupt both ethics and science.
Moscow and Russia hit by heavy bout of AGW…
http://rt.com/news/winter-snow-russia-weather-275/
As we recall, a year or two back either AW himself or some confrere enrolled his devoted canine companion (DCC in warmists’ pseudo-scholarly parlance) as a paid-up Member in Good Standing of the UCS. Accepting dog-o set their famed clock back a bit… mayhap Josh’s Chicken Little briefcase holds another such DCC pedigree,
Deja Vu. Knowledge. Sequestering another persons ability to gain knowledge. Americans of similar utopic outlook voyaged to the new USSR about 1930’s to see with their own eyes what panacea really looked like, up close and personal. Excepting a rare few all of these pilgrims returning with swollen and cracked lips – to not speak openly as it hurt so very much. That utopia took another 60 years to show the truth.
Separtion of church and Science – does not have 60 years of dillydallying. The State owns science, so claim their experts. How is it that only a government may qualify persons of Knowledge?
Anthony,
A monday morning riddle about what the cartoon means?
Well, the original version of it w/o Kenji was posted at Bishop Hill blog in Jan 18 and below the cartoon there was a hat-tip to Joe D’aleo.
My stab at the riddle => Is there some legal action that Joe D’aleo is in a position to know about that involves GISS via UCS action?
Tease!
John
Something tells me that this is going to involve Bill Nye in a chicken suit.
The real question is: who would audiences pay more to see? Michael Mann at $10K a pop or Kenji doing stupid climatologist tricks?
Chicken Little is much maligbed. when she nsaid the sky is falling she was right.She neglectd to add that the sky also rises. The sun heats the earth’s surface, which though conduction heats the air,which then rises, cools, then falls back to earth. So give the little chichen a break, she may have only a bird’s brain, but she has been right all along. It has been those who saw her as a dumb cluck who were wrong,and I include myself here, So we all need rethink our attitude towards this little hen and recognize that she was right and we were not.
Private and public institutes of higher learning all say the same thing. If you have no formal education degree, you have no say in scientific discussion (the broken record of AGW proponents). It is surely by now written in stone. Thou must be decreed to be degreed before thou shalt declare thyself to be learned.
Not so fast says I. The “University of [name] and Son” did pretty well in the old days of family business. But alas I can’t imagine anyone ever again erecting a white marble statue surrounded by a white pillared gleaming enclosure of a person who had no formal education. The common belief is that he or she would not have sense enough to know when to eat. However even a brief stroll through history must lead one to the realization that this conclusion is unsupportable. My own cohort is still peppered with successful business men and women who never finished high school. Must we be forced to smash the stone? No forcing necessary. Many are willingly picking up the sledgehammer (even dogs) taking great chunks out of the AGW scientifically degreed onclave. Thanks to blogs like this one.
Josh wrote to me with the cartoon and was concerned about the sizes of the two characters not being accurate in scale. I replied: Chicken Little’s size has been increased through GISS adjustments, you have the scale just right.
Gone, gone to the dogs.
Infallibility in the Roman Church refers only to Doctrine. Global Warming is not doctrine so is only a matter of individual opinion as it is with other churches. Many clergy do have a scientific education so it’s the exception rather than the rule when they pronounce on Climate Change.They have to know history. unlike many journalists. Education is the main thing and there is a widespread lack of basic education now. The media are narrow shallow and polluted. and a source of misinformation.
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Pamela Gray,
I point out that there is a very low threshold for anyone to know what academics know and to do what they do. All one needs to equal them is a normal human being’s natural capacity for reason and a library card. You do not even need to own a computer with an internet connection; the library has them. But I do recommend having your own equivalent to a BB or iPhone.
It seems to me that academia has erected artificial gatekeepers to compensate for their vulnerability from that low threshold of entry to their knowledge and skills. They are unless gatekeepers because one does not need to enter academia to possess and go beyond their academic content.
Ivory Towers are no better means to knowledge than my public library. Actually, I argue one of the best means to knowledge is a table at Starbucks with free WiFi some good background music softly playing while one sips a triple venti cappuccino.
John
John, to carry your comment further: Academia, for the most part (but not all) seems to exist to give credentials to sooth potential employers.