Compiled by Tom Scott
Please note that many of these quotes were taken almost verbatim from various sources, but I have made a effort to verify each before inclusion. (See at end for a partial list of sources)
Before getting to the climate quotes, I offer the following in order to provide a feel for the sociopolitical background in which modern climate science must operate. This article is not meant to impugn all who practice the art of climate science, but to provide the reader with some idea of the historical turmoil in the arena, some of the conclusions drawn by its practitioners, and the continuing pressures to create dire climate prognostication for self-serving and political purposes.
Two quotes from H.L. Mencken:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” “The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the urge to rule it.”
And three more quotes on knowledge and politics:
“When the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power.” -Alston Chase
“The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses.” -Vladimir Lenin
“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counteract ridicule.” -Saul Alinsky
And a little something to motivate all climate “heretics”.
“First they tell you that you’re wrong, and they can prove it.
Then they tell you you’re right, but it’s not important.
Then they tell you it’s important, but they’ve known it for years.”
-CF Kettering, Time Magazine July 11, 1969, pg 54.
Now, lets look into the motivational background of a few typical players in the green climate movement.
On their love for the human race:
Paul Ehrlich, professor, Stanford University: “A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. We must shift our efforts from the treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer.” John Holdren, now President Obama’s science czar made this statement before taking on that role: “There exists ample authority under which population growth could be regulated…It has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.”
Ted Turner, billionaire, founder of CNN and major UN donor: “A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”
David Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!: “My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with it’s full complement of species, returning throughout the world.”
David Brower, a founder of the Sierra Club: “Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.”
Thoughts on cheap power
Cheap power is the ultimate lever for multiplying human effort and productivity. The end of worldwide slavery can be directly tied to the advent of steam power, and the availability of cheap electrical power was a key enabler for the creation of a large middle class and the advancement of women’s rights, among many other profoundly positive sociological changes. What do key green players think about cheap power?
Paul Ehrlich, professor, Stanford University: “Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”
Jeremy Rifkin, Greenhouse Crisis Foundation: “The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet.”
“Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Coal powered plants, you know, natural gas, you name it, whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.”
-Presidential candidate Barack Obama, January 2008
With that background in mind, here are some quotes from before 1970, the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, and 10s. Recognize any of the players? Care to guess if the world has suffered any of the projected climate disasters?
Before 1970
The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot…. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone… Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds. -Washington Post 11/2/1922
Scientist says Arctic ice will wipe out Canada, Professor Gregory of Yale University stated that “another world ice-epoch is due.” He was the American representative to the Pan-Pacific Science Congress and warned that North America would disappear as far south as the Great Lakes, and huge parts of Asia and Europe would be “wiped out.” –Chicago Tribune August 9, 1923
The discoveries of changes in the sun’s heat and southward advance of glaciers in recent years have given rise to the conjectures of the possible advent of a new ice age -Time Magazine 9/10/1923
America in longest warm spell since 1776; temperature line records a 25 year rise – New York Times 3/27/1933
A mysterious warming of the climate is slowly manifesting itself in the Arctic, engendering a “serious international problem,” -New York Times – May 30, 1947
Greenland’s polar climate has moderated so consistently that communities of hunters have evolved into fishing villages. Sea mammals, vanishing from the west coast, have been replaced by codfish and other fish species in the area’s southern waters. -New York Times August 29, 1954
After a week of discussions on the causes of climate change, an assembly of specialists from several continents seems to have reached unanimous agreement on only one point: it is getting colder. -New York Times – January 30, 1961
Like an outrigger canoe riding before a huge comber, the earth with its inhabitants is caught on the downslope of an immense climatic wave that is plunging us toward another Ice Age.
-Los Angeles Times December 23, 1962 The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. – Paul Ehrlich – The Population Bomb (1968)
It is now pretty clearly agreed that the CO2 content [in the atmosphere] will rise 25% by 2000. This could increase the average temperature near the earth’s surface by
7 degrees Fahrenheit. This in turn could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. Goodbye New York. Goodbye Washington, for that matter. -Presidential adviser Daniel Moynihan, 1969 (later Sen. [D] from New York 1976-2000)
From the 70s
“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air
pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….” -Life Magazine, January 1970
“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.” -Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
“If present trends continue, the world will be … eleven degrees colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age.” -Kenneth E.F. Watt in “Earth Day,” 1970.
“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.” -Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University
“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” -Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist 1970
“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.” -Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist 1970
In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish. -Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day (1970)
“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” -George Wald, Harvard Biologist 1970
Because of increased dust, cloud cover and water vapor “…the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born,” -Newsweek magazine, January 26, 1970.
New Ice Age Coming—It’s Already Getting Colder. Some midsummer day, perhaps not too far in the future, a hard, killing frost will sweep down on the wheat fields of Saskatchewan, the Dakotas and the Russian steppes -Los Angles Times Oct 24, 1971
“By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people … If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” -Paul Ehrlich, Speech at British Institute For Biology, September 1971
Arctic specialist Bernt Balchen says a general warming trend over the North Pole is melting the polar ice cap and may produce an ice-free Arctic Ocean by the year 2000. -Los Angles Times – May 16, 1972
From the 1980s
[In New York City by 2008] The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change. There will be more police cars. Why? Well, you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up… Under the greenhouse effect, extreme weather increases. Depending on where you are in terms of the hydrological cycle, you get more of whatever you’re prone to get. New York can get droughts, the droughts can get more severe and you’ll have signs in restaurants saying “Water by request only.” -James Hansen testimony before Congress in June 1988
U.N. OFFICIAL PREDICTS DISASTER SAYS GREENHOUSE EFFECT COULD WIPE SOME NATIONS OFF MAP – entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of “eco-refugees,” threatening political chaos, said Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program. He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect -Associated Press June 30, 1989
New York will probably be like Florida 15 years from now -St. Louis Post-Dispatch Sept. 17, 1989
Some predictions for the next decade (1990’s) are not difficult to make… Americans may see the ’80s migration to the Sun Belt reverse as a global warming trend rekindles interest in cooler climates. -Dallas Morning News December 5th 1989
From the 1990s
“(By) 1995, the greenhouse effect would be desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots… “(By 1996) The Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers… “The Mexican police will round up illegal American migrants surging into Mexico seeking work as field hands”. -Michael Oppenheimer, “Dead Heat” 1990
Giant sand dunes may turn Plains to desert – Huge sand dunes extending east from Colorado’s Front Range may be on the verge of breaking through the thin topsoil, transforming America’s rolling High Plains into a desert, new research suggests. The giant sand dunes discovered in NASA satellite photos are expected to re- emerge over the next 20 to 50 years, depending on how fast average temperatures rise from the suspected “greenhouse effect,” scientists believe. -Denver Post April 18, 1990
By 2000, British and American oil will have diminished to a trickle……Ozone depletion and global warming threaten food shortages, but the wealthy North will enjoy a temporary reprieve by buying up the produce of the South. Unrest among the hungry and the ensuing political instability, will be contained by the North’s greater military might. A bleak future indeed, but an inevitable one unless we change the way we live…..At present rates of exploitation there may be no rainforest left in 10 years. If measures are not taken immediately, the greenhouse effect may be unstoppable in 12 to 15 years. -5000 Days to Save the Planet – Edward Goldsmith 1991
“It appears that we have a very good case for suggesting that the El Ninos are going to become more frequent, and they’re going to become more intense and in a few years, or a decade or so, we’ll go into a permanent El Nino. So instead of having cool water periods for a year or two, we’ll have El Nino upon El Nino, and that will become the norm. And you’ll have an El Nino, that instead of lasting 18 months, lasts 18 years,” he said. – Dr Russ Schnell, research scientist at Mauna Loa Observatory, BBC November 7, 1997
From the 2000s
“But it does not take a scientist to size up the effects of snowless winters on the children too young to remember the record-setting blizzards of 1996. For them, the pleasures of sledding and snowball fights are as out-of-date as hoop-rolling, and the delight of a snow day off from school is unknown.” -Dr. Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund, New York Times – January 2000
Britain’s winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives. Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain’s culture, as warmer winters – which scientists are attributing to global climate change – produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries. -Charles Onians -UK Independent Mar 20, 2000
Within a few years winter snowfall will become a very rare and exciting event. Children just aren’t going to know what snow is” -Dr David Viner, Senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the
University of East Anglia – Mar 20, 2000 Environmental refugees to top 50 million in 5 years –“There are well-founded fears that the number of people fleeing untenable environmental conditions may grow exponentially as the world experiences the effects of climate change and other phenomena,” -UNU-EHS Director Janos Bogardi – United Nations University news release – 10/11/2005
Scientists in the US have presented one of the most dramatic forecasts yet for the disappearance of Arctic sea ice. Their latest modeling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years. Professor Wieslaw Maslowski told an American Geophysical Union meeting that previous projections had underestimated the processes now driving ice loss. “Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007,” the researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, explained to the BBC. “So given that fact, you can argue that maybe our projection of 2013 is already too conservative.” Professor Maslowski’s group, which includes co-workers at Nasa and the Institute of Oceanology, Polish Academy of Sciences (PAS), is well known for producing models that are in advance of other teams. -BBC Dec. 12, 2007
Arctic warming has become so dramatic that the North Pole may melt this summer (2008), report scientists studying the effects of climate change in the field. “We’re actually projecting this year that the North Pole may be free of ice for the first time [in history],” David Barber, of the University of Manitoba, told National Geographic News aboard the C.C.G.S. Amundsen, a Canadian research icebreaker. -National Geographic News June 20, 2008
“We’re seeing the reality of a lot of the North Pole starting to evaporate, and we could get to a tipping point. Because if it evaporates to a certain point – they have lanes now where ships can go that couldn’t ever sail through before. And if it gets to a point where it evaporates too much, there’s a lot of tundra that’s being held down by that ice cap… -Rep.(D) Henry Waxman, chair of House Energy and Commerce Committee, April 2009
Of course there is no land under the ice within 400+ miles of the north pole, and indeed the water there is about 13,000 feet deep. Mr. Waxman would seem frightfully ignorant for a man in his position. This was recorded during an interview with Tavis Smiley on his NPR TV show. Smiley is known to be very willing to assist Democrat causes, so it could be assumed that this quote could have been retracted before airing had Waxman made a timely request, or if Smiley himself had a clue how ignorant these statements were.
Although they would not admit it publicly, by now the IPPC crowd already knew that the climate had stopped warming. This is confirmed by “climategate” emails, made public in 2009.
“Well, I have my own article on where the heck is global warming…The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” —Dr. Kevin Trenberth, IPCC Lead Author, Climategate e-mail, disclosed Oct. 12, 2009
Meanwhile, outsiders were also aware of the “pause” and were seeking information
through the Freedom of Information Act. So the climate science crowd began fighting back against such requests in an attempt to hide embarrassing data:
“…We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try to find something wrong with it…” —Dr. Phil Jones, Director of the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University, email to Warwick Hughes, 2004
“I’m getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data. Don’t any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act.” —Dr. Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit, Climategate e-mail, Feb. 21, 2005
“Mike [Mann], can you delete any e-mails you may have had with Keith [Trenberth] re AR4? Keith will do likewise…Can you also e-mail Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his e-mail address…We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.” —Dr. Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit, Climategate e-mail, May 29, 2008 (AR4 was the 4th Climate Assessment report released by the IPCC in 2007)
Whats more, they were apparently engaged in a process of “hiding” previous warm
periods so as to accentuate the warming of the 1990s. The 1940s were particularly troublesome because the historical record indicated that a few of those years had been warmer than any since. That data has since been “corrected” by adjusting downward the 1940s temperatures. For example:
“…If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s warming blip (as I’m sure you know). So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say 0.15 deg C, then this would be significant for the global mean—but we’d still have to explain the land blip…” —Dr. Tom Wigley, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, on adjusting global temperature data, Climategate e-mail to Phil Jones, Sep. 28, 2008
And yet, with record high CO2 levels and well over a decade into the “pause”, the public was stillbeing fed the notion that CO2 was the “control knob” for warming:
“…the global surface albedo [surface whiteness] and greenhouse gas changes account for practically the entire global climate change.” —Dr. James Hansen, Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity, 2009
From the 2010s
And so, since about 2010, the global temperature readings have been relentlessly “adjusted”…. almost exclusively downward for data prior to about 1950 and upward thereafter. Meanwhile, much original data have been destroyed or redacted from public view:
“We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e. quality controlled and homogenized) data.” —Climatic Research Unit web site, the world’s leading provider of global temperature data, declaring that it can’t produce the original thermometer data, 2011
But no worries…. after all they are (climate) SCIENTISTS so we should trust that everything they claim is perfectly accurate. And if we also need to bow down to a world technocracy headed by the U.N., then no worries, because (climate) SCIENTISTS told us that we must do so, or our children will die, and who are we to ignore their predictions? After all, I bet they are almost never wrong!
“The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” -Saul Alinsky
And finally, to regain some composure after all of that science-ish disinformation, I suggestreading this monologue from the late George Carlin:
“We’re so self-important. Everybody’s going to save something now. “Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.” And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. Save the planet, we don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet. I’m tired of this shit. I’m tired of f-ing Earth Day. I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren’t enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet. Not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They’re worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me.
The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles … hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages … And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn’t going anywhere. WE are!
We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam … The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ’cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our
prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?” “Plastic… asshole.” -George Carlin
As noted, this article contains a compendium of quotes available online. Some sources include:
Revisiting Climategate as Climatism Falters -Steve Gorham — June 6, 2013
http://www.c3headlines.com/global-warming-quotes-climate-change-quotes.html
http://www.lowerwolfjaw.com/agw/quotes.htm
http://www.climatism.net/quotes-on-climate-change-environment-and-energy/
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/global-warming
http://www.crossroad.to/Quotes/communism/alinsky.htm
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For most of my life, the best bet has been the “Ehrlich Counter Strategy.” Find out what he’s saying, then do the opposite. Nearly 100% success.
Reblogged this on JunkScience.com and commented:
Excellent compilation
OT: Communist and Green Party coalition takes power in Germany.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/11276037/German-far-Left-party-takes-state-parliament.html
We will not worry much about them. It’s three-way-coalition and the social democrats are also a part. They are also interested in the economy, more than the Greens and the Lefts. Together they have only one more vote than the opposition. If somebody makes a small mistake, they will lose the majority quickly.
Btw, Thuringia consists out of 80% forests, the rest 20% is trees. Sort of extended Eastern Bavarian wilderness. So they will not do much harm there.
“It’s three-way-coalition and the social democrats are also a part. They are also interested in the economy, more than the Greens and the Lefts.”
Well nail your hopes on todays SPD and see what it gets you. Barbara Hendricks (SPD, federal enviro minister) wants to close down coal power. The SPD today is far out cultural Marxism dominated by grievance group activists. The Maoist and Stalinist turbo engines Greens and The Left respectively will help them along in finding out what utopia lies behind the engineered collapse of society. GOOD LUCK.
Not off topic at all. Mr. Bodo looks like an evil “dear ruler” from a futurist distopia movie.
magicjava – OT: Communist and Green Party coalition takes power in Germany.
—
Because they’re just the ticket to get Germany out of an economic recession.
(if you didn’t realize that was snark you’re surfing in the wrong spot grommet)
It’s not that funny, really.
The pain is part of what makes it funny. Without pain, there is no humor. Pain is the price of it.
Remember what made Michael Valentine Smith laugh for the first time?
It has been going on longer than a century. The “villians” change, but the crises is the same.
Same as it ever was.
Heck, it was even worse.
Indeed it has been going on for over 100 years. Weather / climate scares have always been with us and people were hung due to bad weather and a changing climate in the Little Ice Age.
Then we have the most excellent Fire And Ice.
As a side note in November 2007 Pachauri has said if no action on ‘climate change’ by 2012 then it’s too late. So you have to wonder why they keep telling us that “WE MUST ACT NOW!”?
The “We only have 5 more years until it’s too late. We must act now!”, schtick will always be spewed out from the watermelons.
That time period correlates to length of time a new batch of naive, gullible kids attends university.
Leave it to our precious NYTimes to use the word “acknowledged” to buttress some wack-mobile left wing speculation.
To this day I cannot understand how Paul Erlich is seen by anyone as credible. He should be laughed off any stage or podium he gets invited to.
Of course you’ve probably taken all of these quotes out of context Anthony. Deniers do that sort of thing. Just like they impersonate other people to obtain documents and create false documents when they can’t find what they wanted. Oh, wait …
The document was compiled by Tom Scott, not Anthony, and the source for the quotations is given at the end of the document, timg56.
And of course, the reference is to Peter Glieck. Gleick. Whatever. Not worth looking up!
For a quote to be taken out of context, it must be placed in a new context. Without knowing the context these were issued in initially, this listing merely serves as a list showing what people have actually said.
+ 1
Henry Kissinger has a great story about when he was Sec. of State, an underling was caught on tape saying the Soviet Ambassador was an idiot. The defence: “My comment was taken out of context!”
Good one, RHS 🙂
And Kissinger, et. al., could easily be pictured as saying: “That denial is not even PLAUSIBLE.”
Heh.
I mean “Ron C” (nice anecdote)
RHS,
The taken out of context comment was a reference to the Team’s primary strategy to counter the Climategate emails. In other words, sarcasm.
I ferverently believe that the quotes above are excellent evidence of the mind set many in the environmental / green movement have. They are not interested in the welfare of the many, only in the welfare of a select few. Selected, of course, by themselves.
Timg56: You’ve solved one conundrum for me: who is the guy with the paper bag over his head? It’s you!!!
Harry,
It was sarcasim. Otherwise it would not have made it through moderation due to the word “deniers”. Here is another hint – “Oh wait …”
Be afraid all ye that inhabit here! Be very afraid! You will all die of the heat. But if you don’t, you will all die of the cold and it will be all your fault.
So what you’re really saying is that if a wolf that snug and warm in sheep’s clothing, like Al Gore say, plays his cards close to his Annuraaq, he just might survive an inconvenient winter?
Actually, I do want some more context for this quote.
Because as it is, it sounds like Jeremy Rifkin is an idiot.
http://articles.latimes.com/1989-04-19/news/vw-2042_1_fusion-uc-berkeley-inexhaustible
Best I could do MCourtney. And he IS an idiot.
Right, so cheap energy would allow us to use up other resources that we can’t afford now because we are limited due to… expensive energy.
And being wealthier will not allow us to innovate – only exploit.
Yes, he is an idiot. Lacking in logic, historical perspective and even compassion.
Why should his lack of imagination restrict the rest of us?
Thanks for the link. I doubted anyone could be as idiotic as the quote presented him to be. But he does appear to be such.
I first ran across Rifkin in the early days of recombinant DNA research where he did his best to stop it.
He tries to stop a lot of things. And he IS in idiot, but he knows how Washington works and how to bend it to his misguided thinking.
http://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/11/us/working-profile-jeremy-rifkin-an-activist-takes-on-genetic-engineering.html
Lately it appears he’s been advising the EU on energy matters. That explains a lot. http://www.foet.org/activities/advising.html ends with:
I’m not so sure. Certainly what he says is idiotic (in The End of Work for example), but it seems to me that it’s those who take him seriously who are the idiots.
My background is in thermodynamics and Jeremy Rifkin wrote a book maybe 25 years ago called “Entropy”. Skimming that book was one the more bewildering experiences of my intellectual life. Here is a man who knows NOTHING of the subject, yet he writes a book that is rather widely praised by the usual suspects. There were gross, idiotic errors on every page, yet Rifkin is still considered one of the leading thinkers on the intellectual left.
TYoke, I’m of the Left, although I may not be intellectual.
Yet, being of the Left, I don’t see any justification (from the Left) for accepting ignorant prejudice over empiricism.
From the Left, dialectically:
-Put up a hypothesis.
-Put up its opposite (reaction).
-Combine the two; find the commonality.
You can’t do that if the opposite completely demolishes the hypothesis. There’s no way to step up a stage as the combination is still the “opposite”. It just doesn’t work.
Idiocy is not acceptable to the Left; I am of the Left and it’s not acceptable to me.
He is an idiot
“Because as it is, it sounds like Jeremy Rifkin is an idiot.”
That would be correct.
And not just a common or garden-idiot.
Some high level idiocy can be acquired with sufficient training, but emperor idiots are born, not made.
What many environmentalists fail to understand is that if people don’t have the energy they want nearby, they will look for it. Deforestation for firewood. India, burn noxious cow dung for cooking etc. I have a couple of large plots of land with many trees which I like. If I am denied my regular coal and gas supplies I WILL chop down those trees and I’m not joking. The law of unintended consequence will come into play and things would be worse for the environment.
Here is Haiti’s border with the better off Dominican Republic. The people on the Haiti side were not joking either. I wonder what GREENS think about this green?
http://web.nmsu.edu/~jfsavage/re_tree_haiti/haiti-island-001.jpg
Oh, I dunno. He might be an idiot, but perhaps for the wrong reasons:
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/
😀
I think he is the inspiration behind post normal science?
Just one word -HILARIOUS!
Don’t forget that John Holdren, Obama’s science Tzar and originator of the terms, “Climate Disruption” and “Polar Vortex”, published a book with Paul Ehrlich titled, “Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment”. You can read about some of his speculations on dealing with overpopulation and other matters.
http://zombietime.com/john_holdren/
In the book they opine that , “Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endangered the society.”
Of course, they decide when the population crisis reaches that point. You establish the threshold then determine when it is reached and implement any draconian measure you want.
Not only is Ehrlich still credible, but so is his co-author John Holdren.
When I was in eighth grade, there was a table in my school lunch room selling copies of Population Bomb.
Since then, the public (and even the UN) has cooled out on population. The torpedoing of the Club of Rome (et multi alia) was the crowning achievement of “Herman’s Hermits” (i.e., the Good Old Hudson Institute that was created to support Herman Kahn, inventor of the first systematic, astoundingly correct, futurology, not its pale, narrow remnant). I was a very junior research assistant in all this, so I got to “see the movie”.
FWIW, I heard Ehrlich interviewed about 5 years back. When pushed into a corner, he grudgingly allowed there was maybe a 10% chance of disaster over the next century. Actually, I could buy that . . . but . . .
We are in a situation that Herman referred to as a “Faustian Bargain”. Faust’s deal with Old Scratch was that Faust must continue his experiment or be eternally damned. We are in somewhat of an analogous situation: slamming on the brakes will almost certainly do untold damage.
But do not fear the experiment. It is a great and glorious experiment. There is ugliness if we “roll the dice” badly. But there is such huge and universal benefit if we roll even average dice. And such unimaginable bounty if we roll well (and bet wisely, or at least not foolishly).
We should be bright with anticipation. Surf’s Up! Yet we remain, for all the world, surfers cursing the wave.
+100
I’ve been doing science mentoring for almost 20 years now – mostly field based ecology – and I wouldn’t let John Holdren within a 100 miles of any of the students I’ve worked with.
Reblogged this on the WeatherAction News Blog and commented:
What a wonderful collection of doom mongering – brought back memories of children’s books with future humanity in gas masks yet here we are with better air. The doom mongering formula is to take anything bad and just add a linear trend.
Thanks Josh, excellent commentary too. The Carlin quote much appreciated and very on the money (natch!)
Damn Carlin was a funny man, on purpose, not like the other’s quoted who are funny by mistake. But the sad thing is the comical rant is more logic-based than the other quotes (save for the well-founded fears of an impending glacial period).
I totally agree with your comment. Astute observation on your part as well as Carlin’s.
OMG! Glowball warming means – WE’RE RUNNING OUT OF DIRT!
Seriously, you just can’t make this stuff up.
http://news.yahoo.com/only-60-years-farming-left-soil-degradation-continues-165713221.html
@OP:
…Two quotes …
You could have added:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.”
Upton Sinclair (1878 – 1968)
These quotes/predictions are almost a corollary of…
Fen’s Law:
The Left believes in none of the things they lecture the rest of us about.
The alarming predictions are wrong. All of them, no exceptions.
When one side in a debate is wrong 100.0% of the time, rational folks will disregard their continuing narrative.
“The alarming predictions are wrong. All of them, no exceptions.”
Except the sea is rising, the ice is melting and the temperature is going up. Other than that they are completely wrong.
The sea seems to be rising, but the measurements are made by institutions that have declared this is what they expect to observe. Ice is not melting: As of today, its extent is above the post 1979 average. Lower tropospheric temperature is not going up; surface temperature is, measured again by institutions that expect to observe warming, and are funded to find it.
Is it rising faster than it has in the last 200 years? Not really. The ice in summer has gone down by about 27% over the last 30 years but only about 7% in the winter. Not so alarming to me. It is 20 below zero for 6-8 months of the year in the arctic. The temperature has also not gone up much faster than it has in the past. Compare the 30 year period ending in about 1940 with that ending in about 2000. Given that climate does seem to have 30 year half-cycles, it is a bit soon to say we know for sure. I would argue that if anything there is only about a 0.1 degree increase in 30 years ABOVE what was seen just prior to the 1940 period I mentioned above. About 10,000 years ago sea level rose by ~100 feet. Don’t panic yet Simon. And don’t be concerned that 2014 in SOME temp. records is 0.01 degrees warmer than ten years ago.
Hi Simon,
Here is where you can follow the actual ice coverage: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ as well as this site: http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/
The slowly rising temperature and sea level changes since the 1800s are typical of an inter-glacial period. This is not cause for alarm or governmental distraction.
You can find all this on the reference pages to this blog (at the top) http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/
Assuming the context of the last 12000 years you are extremely slightly correct… so insignificantly correct that your implication is totally wrong. Icesheet melt in interstadials does cause sea rise, ice melt and rising temps, in the reverse chrono and causal order… so what?! There is no danger from CO2, the trend is insignificant and you are an idiot.
Except the sea is rising,..65% of tide gauges show sea levels static or falling.
the ice is melting….both poles have record high ice, the ice is closing in on us from the top and bottom
and the temperature is going up….not for 1/2 of the satellite record..the past ~18 years
Other than that?
Well now, Simon Says, so we can all just take his word for it.
But the sea is rising at a rate of well under a foot per century. Tidal gauge measurement (which Moerner uses) is especially encouraging (moreso than satellite data).
Ice, all in all, is declining, but slower in the Arctic than anticipated (and much due to soot, not CO2, according to the NASA/Zender and Sand studies). In the Antarctic, there has been no decline at all.
Temperatures are indeed rising, but by how much? So far it has been consistent with the rate of Arrhenius (~1.1C per doubling), but without the positive feedbacks tripling that warming.
Don’t ask “how”. Ask “how much”.
..and has been since the end of the last ice age…
Simon,
• Sea levels have generally been rising since the termination of the last glaciation over 10,000 years ago.
• Global sea ice anomaly is at ‘normal’
• Global surface temperature is at a standstill.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/ipcc2007/fig68.jpg
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/iphone/images/iphone.anomaly.global.png
Bill_W “About 10,000 years ago sea level rose by ~100 feet. ” Ha ha that quote should be in this article. Really, where did you in all the garbage spouted about climate change read that chestnut?
It helps if you know how to read and do research – http://noc.ac.uk/news/global-sea-level-rise-end-last-ice-age
That took all of about 30 seconds – and it linked to right on this site.
Jimbo
Arctic sea ice melting three times faster than antarctic growing.
You are deluding yourself if you think surface temp at a standstill. Look at the first telling graph by decade. The 2000’s have by far been the warmest decade
http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/highlights/report-findings/our-changing-climate
It would benefit you if you learned the difference between “warming” (an action verb) and “warm” (an adjective). Until you do, I am sorry, but your sputterings are worthless.
Except the sea is rising, the ice is melting and the temperature is going up.
Wrong, wrong and wrong.
Nul points.
Simon,
Then you did NOT read the standstill quotes from the likes of Trenberth (IPCC author), Professor Rowan Sutton (an IPCC founder), Dr. Hans von Storch etc. Read them again HERE.
You are deluding yourself if you think
a) There will be an ice-free Arctic within the next 35 years.
b) The death spiral has not halted.
See
Abstract – 22 APR 2010
Twentieth century bipolar seesaw of the Arctic and Antarctic surface air temperatures
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010GL042793/full
Sunday, March 30, 2014
New paper supports the bipolar seesaw theory of abrupt climate change
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2014/09/arctic-antarctic-sea-ice-extent.html
Only time will tell whether you, or I am deluded I suppose.
Jimbo…”Only time will tell whether you, or I am deluded I suppose.”
And that is what keeps us all reading and watching.
Is an unemployed coal miner an ‘environmental refugee’?
Good point, Dawt.
Nope. Just coal-ateral damage a la Enviro — Timothy McVeighs (ugh).
Ooh! That was sort of dark…
@ur momisugly Dawt — lol
Any one else think Paul Erlich could serve as the inspiration for Mr. Smith in the Matrix Trilogy?
http://freebeacon.com/columns/liberalism-is-a-hoax/
Sums things up rather nicely. If you think it’s about the science….no, it’s not.
It is about the science, though. I think these guys really were trying to get it right, but were not being very closely observed (or audited), and they just let their confirmation biases run away with them.
And now they have found themselves way out on an increasingly tenuous limb, trying to get the toothpaste (their reputations) back in the tube. As one wit put it, they are like Wile E. Coyote, who has just looked down and realizes there is no ledge beneath him. I wouldn’t trade places with any of them.
I am an old hand. I am not only a game designer but also a game developer. I know what a 75% * 75% * 75% * 75% chance really is. I am also painfully aware how even hardened “veteran” wargamers always treat this like a 75% chance. These guys are just as bad. Worse, even, because they don’t have the fear ingrained into any experienced wargamer.
This sounds simplistic, but it’s really that bad.
I also realize that when “simulating” (always use scare quotes!) chaotic events that are in many ways unaccountable, even in recent hindsight, such as wars, you need to do it from the top down. And always know that if your hindcast (i.e., your storyboard) isn’t cutting it, you are doing it wrong.
And even then, any future projections don’t mean a whole lot (if anything). These guys don’t get that. Neither do a lot of you right here and now, I daresay. All the eager young game designers think they can do WWII man-to-man scale. Been there, done that. It’s a phase we go through.
The current prima donnas are not unlike game designers who blow off the distress rockets put up by their developers and playtesters. But they are paying dearly for their folly, and I do not envy them. If anything, I pity them.
evanmjones
Thanks.
I think the significant thing about WUWT – for me – is how little is actually known – dead stone bonker known.
Many people know some – and think they have a hypothesis about more – in a narrow field, or perhaps highlights across several fields.
Auto
Carlin’s monologue was truly one of his best ever.
Thanks for the Carlin… I needed the laugh.
Well done, Tom Scott!
Magnificent compilation demonstrating that:
TRUTH STANDS THE TEST OF…
TIME.
(pretty hilarious…. they were SOOOO sure they were right (or, at least, so sure their l1es would never be found out by lives in being, heh, heh)).
They really, really thought they were at least mostly right.
They really, really KNEW that they did not know whether or not they were right…
yet, recklessly, intentionally, stated what they knew they did not know with any reasonable degree of certainty as
fact.
Thus, they had the mens rea to convict them of fraud.
To paraphrase: “The more Climate Changes, the more it stays the same.”
Wonderful stuff. But Carlin’s piece was the best. I will have to keep that and use it sometime. It wasn’t Graham Greene, but it was great nonetheless.
yes, and Carlin’s quotes were the only ones that made sense. May he RIP
Carlin here: