Argh. You often wonder how weapons grade hubris can be come to be. For example, we shake our head at the hubris of people like Michael Mann and James Hansen, whom I’m convinced are simply victims of noble cause corruption in their quest to “save the planet”. Well it seems NPR reporter Adam Frank has topped everyone when it comes to talking about climate science and its importance in the scheme of things.
From the NPR story: The Climate Story Nobody Talks About (h/t to Marc Morano)
In service of answering this question and looking for perspectives on climate change beyond the usual focus on controversy, let’s begin by acknowledging a single fact that’s rarely discussed in the media: Climate science is a triumph of human civilization.
Landing on the moon. The development of relativity theory. The discovery of DNA. We rightfully hail these accomplishments as testaments to the creative power of the human imagination. We point to them as the highest achievements of our species, calling them milestones in our collective evolution.
But climate science is no different. It, too, belongs in that short list of epoch making human efforts.
Bold mine.
In short, climate science is supposedly one of the greatest achievements of mankind, after all, the IPCC awarded the Nobel Prize in 2007 to a couple of guys named Al Gore and Rajenda K. Pachauri, both of which have had sex scandals, and Pachauri had to step down as head of the IPCC. Gore seems to be politically self-neutered and few people except bots seem to care anymore about what he has to say.
In fact, the U.N. poll of over 7 million people says climate change is dead last in concern.
I found this but of chutzpah in the article quite amazing:
Just two centuries ago, humanity barely understood that a planet’s climate could change at all.
Tell it to the Vikings in Greenland, the people that went through the cold and crop failures of the dark ages period with black plague, and the people that lived through the Little Ice Age, and the Peruvians.
No, nobody ever figured out the climate could change before our current crop of saviors of humanity came along. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Maybe nobody ever talks about The Climate Story Nobody Talks About simply because it’s ridiculous to claim it is of “humanity’s greatest achievements”, particularly since doomsayers like the disgraced identity thief and faked up documents purveyor Dr. Peter Gleick was telling us in 2010 that we are past the point of no return anyway? Oh wait, that was the last chance climate conference in 2009. Adam Frank is talking about the next last chance conference coming in Paris this fall.
Some achievement, King Canute would be proud.
Note: this story was updated shortly after publication to fix an error in the title and give a hat tip to the source for the NPR story
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Hmmm…Tacitus wrote about how the Germans related that in former times the Rhine would completely freeze over. Is that modern, 56-117 CE?
Speaking of the Rhine, and the greatest human achievements; Climate awareness doesn’t even come close to Richard Wagner’s ” Der Ring des Nibelungen ”
And that was all done by just one man.
Well we do also owe something to Cosima, for preserving it for us.
G
Two days ago I was at the Royal Terrel Museum in Drumheller Alberta.
great place to apreciate how small man really is.
Climate changes ? Who knew?
When you are face to face with the bones of creatures that could not live today, due to a lack of biomass to feed on, it is somewhat hard to take the hysteria of CAGW as anything but a puton.
And there is not enough biomass nowadays because there is not enough CO2 in the atmosphere.
Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of climate alarmism will be to forever banish alarmism as a source of control over societies and liberties.
Well, one can hope, right?
Peter
Peter
We certainly can hope.
You and I will do what we can to persuade.
But – Forever – our nemesises have all of time itself before them.
Constant alertness, please.
Auto
Memory has a life span of 1 generation,
History repeats itself.
Which is why, sadly, each new generation needs to be inoculated against the virus of socialism.
“Climate science is a triumph of human civilization”
I think this statement pushes the limits of stupidity to heights never before achieved in human civilization.
Raises High on the rim, Like a Crown and low in the middle like a valley. So Climate Science is the Crowning achievement in the valley of stupidity
Ralph,
“We rightfully hail these accomplishments as testaments to the creative power of the human imagination.”
The alarmists and their news and “science studies” crews sure do have good imaginations with the crapola they come up with. It’s disappointing that with the funding they get their imaginations mostly fail them. “Create” imaginary BS and sell it to the zombies is high up there in the scope of human endeavors, I am sure.
IT’S RECORD BREAKING!!!!
Greatest achievement? Truly, our bread is being buttered on both sides now. Climatology should not even be called a science. Where is its predictive power? When alarmist claims rest on a molehill of manipulated data, this is nothing short of laughable.
For Great Human Achievement I nominate WUWT. In future it may be shown to have played a part in saving mankind.
Seconded. Sane people everywhere owe Anthony (and the scientists who support his page with their informed comment) a huge debt of gratitude
++++
Auto
Us commoners may add a smidgen, but the Heavy Duty Scientists get – rightly – the huge bulk of the gratitude for – Only You Can Save Mankind’.
Auto
Sorry Auto; I’m busy.
I’m the only one who can prevent forest fires, and I have my hands full right now !!
g
“Just two centuries ago, humanity barely understood that a planet’s climate could change at all.”
‘It is a historical fact that the glacier in Glacier Bay began its retreat around 1750. By the time Capt. George Vancouver arrived there in 1794 the glacier still filled most of the bay but had already retreated some miles.
‘When John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, visited in 1879, he found that the glacier had retreated more than 30 miles from the mouth of the bay, according to the National Park Service, and by 1900 Glacier Bay was mostly ice-free.’
[All of that climate change was 100% natural.]
http://www.wsj.com/articles/obamas-half-baked-alaska-1441321015
And the simple fact that the Current retreating Ice is still revealing remnants of prior Viking civilizations that have been buried by that same ice. Conditions had to be Ice Free at those locations for the settlements to have been founded in the first place.
Not to mention the simple fact that Retreating Ice is still revealing remnants of prior Viking Civilizations that could not have existed unless prior conditions had also been Ice Free at the time of their founding
That’s right! They just did not notice that we had……
Crop failures, hunger, mass migration, epidemics, great storms in the North Atlantic, Europe wide witch hunts, endemic Malaria in England & part of the Arctic Circle, higher wildfire frequency in circumboreal forests, strong droughts in central Africa (1400–1750), social unrest in China, dead Central American coral reef, century-scale droughts in East Africa, large increases in flood magnitude (upper Mississippi tributaries), environmental and economic deterioration in Norway, decline in average height of Northern European men, climate became drier on the Yucatan Peninsula, sudden and catastrophic end of the Norse Western Settlement in Greenland, River Thames freeze-overs, agro-ecological, socioeconomic, and demographic catastrophes, leading to the General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century.
[References for the above]
Just two centuries ago….! Can you say human child sacrifice in pre-Columbian cultures? People have been aware of climate change for some time.
Why were witches executed OVER 200 years ago? Part of the answer is of course CLIMATE CHANGE!
It is alleged that humans were not aware of changing climates until 200 years ago. Astonishing!
Jimbo,
Many thanks for your commitment to sourcing contrary studies
Despite being associated with UEA’s CRU, Kathleen Pribyl has done what looks to me like a good job of reconstructing late Medieval English climate by calibrating with the CET. Would appreciate Tony B’s comments, who works the same fields.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wea.2317/pdf
She finds extreme weather effects from the biggest volcanic eruptions during this period, but they pass quickly. The trend, no surprise, is down from the Medieval Warm Period, not gotten rid of by Mann, et al despite their best anti-statistical efforts., to the LIA. But is wasn’t a steady decline. Thus the people of that time, subject to famine and disease, thus reliant on clement weather for survival, must have noticed climate change within their own lifetimes.
She writes, “The results
reveal a drop in April to July mean temperatures
over the period from 1256 to 1431 from
13°C to 12.4°C (Figure 3). These falling spring
and early summer mean temperatures illustrate
the transition from the Medieval Warm
Period to the Little Ice Age. However, this was
not a smooth transition: decades of colder
and warmer conditions alternated. Higher
April to July mean temperatures prevailed in
the first decade of the fourteenth century,
during the late 1320s and early 1330s, the
1350s and the 1390s. Lower temperatures
marked the mid-1290s, about 1313 to 1323,
the late 1330s and 1340s, the mid-1360s to
the mid-1370s and the 1380s. Additionally
the reconstruction reveals periods of high
and low inter-annual variability in the spring
and early summer temperatures. Between
1315 and 1335 as well as 1360–1375 the
year to year variability was especially high:
jumps in growing season temperatures from
one year to the next were frequently reaching
1.5°C. Phases of medium inter-annual variability
marked 1290–1315, about 1405–1411 and
the early 1420s. Finally, during the second
half of the 1330s and in the 1340s, in the
1350s, around 1380 and in the 1410s spring
and early summer temperatures were comparatively
stable.”
lady gaiagaia
Hope you see my comment here;
I have written on Pribyl before. Yes it is an interesting reconstruction using manorial crop records for the East Anglian area.
I have the Titow crop records for a wider swathe of southern England and had an additional set translated from the Latin and medieval French. The weather at times seems very disturbed, ranging from warmer than today to colder than today, with many weather extremes thrown in. Volcanic eruptions seem to have a very short term real world effect of a season or two.(which of course could be catastrophic to subsistence farming)
An indication of the changing climate can be seen in the title I have chosen for my next piece of CET reconstruction-approx the 13th and 14th Centuries
‘Tranquility, transition and turbulence’
tonyb
Welcome back Jimbo! Wonderful to have your seemingly inexhaustible reference library available again.
When did we discover that the earth only has one climate; it’s the same everywhere ??
But it keeps changing everywhere too.
g
Double Argh.
Totally, barking mad. So-called “climate science”, by which he obviously means the “consensus” is actually the worst, most destructive of both mankind as well as the environment anti-achievement ever produced.
Humans have always been aware of changing climate and the need to adapt to it. Many civilisations failed and were overwhelmed as shown in Cambodia, Peru and numerous other places. Al gore wrote a rather good book on th subject, ‘earth in the balance’
I examined many of these changes in climate in various countries in this article carried here a few years ago, including the Romans, Vikings and in Canada and America and the UK
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/01/a-short-anthology-of-changing-climate/
Tonyb
Fat Albert’s books are ghost written by uncredited “collaborators”.
Actually, in 1815 the fact of climate change was recognized and being studied by real scientists, not today’s GIGO computer gamers. In 1801 the great astronomer Sir William Herschel investigated the relationship between sunspots and climate, pointing to the cold conditions of the 17th century during what would come to be called the Maunder Minimum.
By 1830, knowledge of extinct species had grown so much that Henry De la Beche could paint a picture of “A More Ancient Dorset”, relying on fossils found by Mary Anning, starting in 1811. Clearly, Dorset’s climate was balmier during the Jurassic.
Already by 1837, Agassiz proposed the possibility of past ice ages.
Lady G:
Fat Albert’s books are ghost written by uncredited “collaborators”.
For his sake, I hope his charts were ghost written, too.
He might have made those up himself.
Lady Gaiagaia,
Here is some more climate change awareness before 1815.
Jimbo,
Good ones, as usual.
Thanks.
Yup, ancient Greeks understood that different zones of the earth had different climate, which derives from their word “klima” (slope). They also knew that conditions could stay warmer or cooler, wetter or drier, for extended periods. Mycenaean and Minoan civilizations were devastated by the Greek Dark Ages Cold Period.
Damn busy spot you found their Lady GG. No wonder humans didn’t survive in that era.
g
George,
The fact is that we’ve survived much bigger swings than the mild late Holocene has thrown at us.
The Warmunistas have no knowledge of climate history,
It seems to be a very narcissistic trait in most of the alarmist population. Self centered and unable to use their great “Imaginations” to understand that the world didn’t just “happen” during their lifetimes. Anything outside of their small, short view of their life experience simply cannot be possible. “the “normal climate” for them is simply what they have experienced since they were old enough to know what seasons are.
A new psychological term needs to be defined for the alarmists… something similar to the definition of someone who attributes human behaviors and characteristics to animals.
The difference now, and the real accomplishment, is that we are able to precisely count the number of climate angels who can stand on the head of a climate pin. The people back then couldn’t do that.
Tonyb, thanks for the link full off climate change awareness before 1815. I tried hard to recall a US president’s quotes on his observation of climate change. Your link told me it was Thomas Jefferson.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/01/a-short-anthology-of-changing-climate/
Here is another. I think we can lay the 200 year claim to rest now.
Climate change is normal and has always been with us.
Oh what the heck, here’s a bonus.
More pre 1815 climate awareness from the book:
Historical Perspectives on Climate Change.
See also
http://www.climate4you.com/ClimateAndHistory.htm
http://www.climate4you.com/ClimateAndHistory%201700-1799.htm
The contraceptive pill, the washing machine and mass transportation networks – these are great achievements.
But they only male things better if you think people should be free to live their lives as they choose.
Scaring people into living their lives as you choose – surely that’s an even greater achievement.
In the short term. They’ll get you in the end.
MCourtney — “The contraceptive pill, the washing machine …” … “they only male things better …”
Heh. As Freud said, “sometimes a cigar is only a cigar”.
“sometimes a cigar is only a cigar”.”
Freud? Or was that Mr. Clinton?
Good spot.
My typing is so Freudian.
It’s the fingers. I have Carpal Train Tunnel syndrome.
@MCourtney, Might that read Channel Train Tunnel syndrome? That one gets me cramped up as well.
“On Nov. 30, world leaders will gather in Paris for a pivotal United Nations conference on climate change.”
Obama Rebuffed As Superpowers Refuse To Sign Arctic Climate Agreement
http://www.thegwpf.com/obama-isolated-as-superpowers-refuse-to-sign-arctic-climate-agreement/
AYUP
Definitely heading for a new Climate Epoch-alypse
It’s really bad thing to have to say and I will admit to a couple of whisky’s, but the best place for the likes of Mann is Syria, preferably in the company of an English chap who goes by the name of John.
Whatever you might thnk of Mann it is inappropriate to think it is a good idea to send him to present day Syria. It is very sad to see what is happening there. In happier days I stayed at the Baron hotel in Aleppo where agatha Christine once stayed and went round the crusader castles.
It was full of urbane and civilised people who got a govt they didn’t deserve.
Tonyb
It was full of urbane and civilised people who got a govt they didn’t deserve.
So did we.
@climatereason, The ME for a long time was ( still is I guess) incredibly beautiful, Lebanon, Turkey Syria, Israel, all of them . Where did this all go wrong Even Afghanistan, Egypt, Baghdad and Iran were incredible to visit . The history, the monuments etc . I can’t believe this is all going to hell.
Hmm,
Isn’t it theorized by anthropologists that the way man evolved into what we are today in part is thanks to rapidly shifting climates and our nomadic drive to scour the Earth?
Wouldn’t that suggest that we’ve always been aware of climate change?
Yes, I think we’ve always been aware of the climate, early explorers went to no small length to document the natural and social differences between different places. It’s just a symptom of pseudo-intellects to assume that they’re more aware than all others past and present
Positive proof that climate changes. No matter how many Californias those nomads found, they always discovered there was a still better place out there; and the place they were, actually sucked..
g
During the fastest deglaciation pulses, sea level rises 30 to 60 mm per year. Coastal dwellers would notice this in even a brief human life time (1.2 to 2.4 meters in 40 years).
Climate change however doesn’t always occur rapidly enough to be noticeable, as during long spells of the Holocene. People did indeed note deteriorating conditions during the LIA.
Like other African animals, humans evolved in response to climate change during the Pliocene and Pleistocene. The spread of grasslands and retreat of forests led to selection in favor of bipedalism, as evinced by the evolution of australopithecines from more standard ape locomotion, freeing the hands. More cooling and drying led to genus Homo, which spread out of Africa.
vainglory
[veyn-glawr-ee, -glohr-ee, veyn-glawr-ee, -glohr-ee]
noun
1. excessive elation or pride over one’s own achievements, abilities, etc.; boastful vanity.
2. empty pomp or show.
c.1300, “worthless glory,” waynglori, from Old French vaine glorie, from Medieval Latin vana gloria (see vain + glory (n.)).
Author, note: “noble cause corruption” is an oxymoron. A noble cause is a good thing and cannot be bad. There is no noble cause in this so-called “noble cause corruption.” Please find another term. For example, something as simple as “false heroism” or “faux nobility” or “faux science”—perhaps “treachery” is the best of all. Using a flaccid term weakens our argument.
How about stupid
appropriate…
Just a thought, but I was up late watching the Ken Burns “The Civil War” history. Did the die hard Confederates like Jubal Early and the Knights of the Golden Circle (founders of the KKK) call their failed madness the “Noble Cause”?
As a result of the victory of the Union, this amendment was included in all of the Territories and new western states:
No person shall be put to forced labor or involuntary servitude, except in the case of felony.
That amendment was already present in many of the northern states. Thanks to the generation that finally settled that question.
“Just two centuries ago, humanity barely understood that a planet’s climate could change at all.”
Just 50 years ago, humanity knew the definition of “climate,” and would recognize immediately that “a planet’s climate” is stoopid.
We have entered the era of PT Barnum science.
Climate science is the gentle art of making a natural and on-going process look evil and man-made without looking like a kook. All the low hanging fruit has been plucked from this tree and they’re now revealing the underlying madness that drives them. The best example is climate nutter Al Gore who has the carbon footprint of a military fortress and a climate message delivered with a Cheshire Cat smile. It is this population of bitter limousine climate alarmists who demand laws requiring others to conform to a low-carbon lifestyle that are particularly interesting. Why are they never the first or even the last to conform to their own beliefs?
Has anyone looked at the original article?
Where does the chart come from? It looks rather contrived to me.
The chart is part of WUWT’s commentary about the article. Direct quotes from the article are in the blue boxes.
The chart is part of WUWT’s commentary about the article. Direct quotes from the article are in the blue boxes.
You can search the internet and find that chart. It did not originate here.
Some Coryphaeus of Science.
Not hubris at all……………………
Weapons grade mental is what it is.
The greatest human achievement of all time will be, against all odds, and with all the political and economic power along with tools of spreading propaganda stacked massively against them, the defeat of Climatism; the most destructive ideology in human history.
This is what happens when Governments contrive to dumb down education, so that very few people are taught any history, or any science. Those emerging from College not only have no capacity to identify falsehoods – they can’t very well stop themselves from perpetuating them.
They have no sense of proportion, and no historical perspective. And they lack the tools even to know what science truly is – yet they can infiltrate the media and take on the role of opinion formers and ‘pundits’.
Often, the excuse given for this dumbing down is that such subjects as history and science are ‘not relevant’ to kids’ lives. Yet without any solid basis of knowledge in these fields, young adults vote for politicians who are equally ignorant, and whose policies affect us all.
Whether this dumbing down is deliberate on the part of our masters, I leave you to decide.
@ur momisugly Sam The First ( hopefully not the last, you make sense). Around the mid eighty period my wife and I were bringing up three kids and found out that exact problem. The dumbing down started I think even before that time frame, to us the early to mid 60’s? ( The ” love” period?). Drugs and a dismissal of teachers and profs in the universities. And it is deliberate there is no doubt in our minds at all and it is still happening. These days it is probably worse just check out “Spring Break” in most western countries these days. And the students that do graduate are so to the left it is astounding to see. Think about it and look at the set-up in places like McD/Burger King and other franchises like them. They may look like capitalists . But to us it is lock step with the “factory” otherwise you don’t get anywhere. Clones.