Never mind the threat of nuclear war, asteroid and comet impacts, a super volcanic eruption, robot overlords, or a global pandemic…no these aren’t all that threatening according to Professor Raymond Pierrehumbert of Oxford, one of the founders of “Real Climate”. No, it’s “climate change”.
Climate Challenge is “Humanity’s Final Exam”
From the description of the interview:
After a couple of decades of studying climate change and teaching at the University of Chicago, Raymond Pierrehumbert has been named the new Halley Professor of Physics at Oxford University. On a recent visit to The New York Times, he capped a fascinating interview with this sobering thought.
It is instructive to view the list of 12 biggest threats to humanity from this story at the Washington Post
They give just a 0.01 percent chance of extreme climate change happening in next 200 years. they rank Artificial Intelligence, Unknown consequences, and Synthetic Biology higher.
I’d say humanity has a lot of “final exams”, and climate change is the least of our worries.
And who can forget this story about Raymond Pierrehumbert?
The wit and wisdom of ‘Real’ Climate scientist Dr. Ray Pierrehumbert
![RayPierhumbert[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/raypierhumbert1.jpg?quality=83)
Or how about this one, where he calls coal “Satan’s Rock”
But it’s the climate skeptics who are labeled the crazy people, not esteemed paragons of “sensibility” like Dr. Pierrehumbert.
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At least if there is a sudden demise of AGW science the esteemed Oxford proff, Dr. P might earn decent living by basking at the Oxford Circus tube station (btw not in Oxford)
basking ?????
You mean BUSKING, I think !!
with his qualifications he could do both simultaneously, basking in the sun, while busking for living, after all any day now London is going to be as hot as Barcelona.
Vuk: after all any day now London is going to be as hot as Barcelona.
For climate science extrapolation purposes it already is. They are less than 1200km apart, so if we had no measurements for London it would be perfectly acceptable to use the temperature data from Barcelona.
The idea of Climate Challenge is “Marxism Final Exam”” ?
There was nuttin’ in that comment that merited cloaking.
“merited cloaking” , (as usual) I don’t get it.
That is because what I said was “bleeped” into oblivion.
“merited cloaking” – I don´t get it either.
And also I don´t get:
“That is because what I said was “bleeped” into oblivion.”
I have no idea what he tries to say.
A cloaking device renders something invisible.
‘Merited’ means earned. So, ‘merited cloaking’ means that something was deservedly made invisible.
English is awesome.
I was OK with the meaning of the terms used, but Mr. Westhaver’s comment followed immediately after mine (see times) so I got impression that it was directed at what I said.
My sincere apology to all concerned.
Probably something to do with cloaca.
Paul, Nothing in spam filter or moderation. No active “bleeps” that I’m aware of here.
Thank-you Anthony. In that case, the most likely explanation is a mistake on my part…and I make many.
I suspect WP manages to lose a few comments for no apparent reason. Hey, it’s better the FaceBook.
Several times I have tried to make a comment, but the machine tells me I can’t. I don’t know if it’s a glitch, or I’ve hit a bad word filter, or what.
Paul, your server might be buffering outgoing comments. Mine does this all the time as of late. I use a local line-of-site wifi company that has limited capacity. Lately I have been getting buffered a bunch! It shows up here on this blog by having sent comments somewhere in limbo by my server, not by the host here. It can take minutes to over an hour before it shows up. I sometimes have to ask myself if the buffering is because of a low-end service company or if the buffering is due to some kind of imposed monitoring of less than politically correct blog traffic. After all, the Guv’mnt has targeted other politically opposing entities for scrutiny. And since they can’t selectively monitor my traffic, maybe they buffer the whole thing? Even my incoming downloads, including advertisements, news videos, etc, are buffered as well.
On the other hand, the buffering could just be related to dramatically increased internet use by everybody.
Yes, I’ve noticed a delay in access to the email account I use. I now clean out my cache after every visit to WUWT. Hmmmm.
“Raymond Pierrehumbert has been named the new Halley Professor of Physics at Oxford University.”
Looks like Oxford is not much of a university. (as most these days are not)
University is OK, my daughter got science master degree there few years back. Occasionally I contributed a modest donation, imagine my dismay when one of students pointed to her the IPPC Assessment Report with inscription ‘this book was bought by donation from Mr. & Mrs Vukcevic’.
Life is oddly full of those little moments.
IPPC AR -5 is surely worthy of careful study, a classic case history the subordination of science to political ideology. More subtle than Lysenko and much more consequential.
Raymond Pierrehumbug will say whatever he’s told to say (unless he’s caught the AGW “religion”) – it ensures that he gets his funding. If he told the truth, he’d be out on his ear before you could say “warmist”!
Halley Professor? As in Halley’s Comet? Maybe he’ll disappear for 86 years
The biggest threat to humanity is WILLFUL STUPIDITY.
.. The greatest threat to Humanity is liberalism !
The biggest CLIMATE threat to humanity will be when the next Ice Age returns, not some popular, highly funded meme flag-poled by some crazy prof from the U. of Chicago.
..Didn’t we use to put these people in asylums at one time ? For their own safety, of course ! D’oh !
I think I know that tune.
“They are coming to take me away.
Ha Ha Hee Hee”
On a more serious note, this fellow specializes in planetary conjecture of which there can as yet be no proof. Ice ball/ Non Ice ball earth. Planetary climate of Mars for the first billion years. Etc. He is simply doing it again. I had his sort in college. Common in certain levels of university science departments. They publish every stray thought as if it is earth shattering and become addicted.
Pat
Napoleon XIV
the price of cheese . . . . . .
I’m sure it would be on You-Tube.
Auto
here…
from 5 years ago, right here at WUWT:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/19/on-the-anniversary-of-climategate-realclimates-ray-pierrehumbert-sings-the-blues-chicago-style/
It hurts to watch.
..I find it terrifying that these people are allowed to walk the streets among our children !
I find it terrifying that these people are allowed to teach.
Don’t make eye contact, keep walking. If he grabs your arm, point across the street and yell, “Look Mikey Manniacal”.
It used to be a hat or a bag on the floor for tips. It’s the first time I’ve seen a glass of wine used for tips. Must be the Oxford touch.
very very clever…wine glass for tips
Don’t you worry. He has the hair qualifications to teach Marxism.
I was wondering how old he is, but he has covered his tracks well. He’s over 60, right?
There is something deeply insidious about students incurring $500,000 in debt to be proselytized by these shamans posing as scientists.
You want to solve the student debt crises, give these LSD infused nut jobs an express pass out the front door. How does this guy get to be head of the head, let alone a physics department!?!
The science section of university libraries, should be relabeled “Fiction”
Well. Have you tried to understand quantum physics? Gotta be a little touched. Especially when the equation collapses.
Ouch! Paul you could have gone all day for a year not posting that abomination (abortion?) of a music video. His participation in that fiasco should have disqualified him for any university post anywhere.
As far as I can imagine there have been many final exams produced by climate change. We are the product of the ones that passed them.
Remembering back to a physical anthropology class I took in the previous century, encephalization of humans was accelerated by the ice ages, according to some anthropologists whose names I do not remember.
I don’t doubt the good Professor’s lectures would be entertaining. 😉
Stand up comedy takes timing.
Professor Raymond Pierrehumbert has been named the new Halley Professor of Physics at Oxford University and has also taken on the role of Nutty Professor Emeritus of England.
From the wonderful Pibgorn comic strip by Brooke McEldowney, June 20, 2011 syndicated by gocomix.com. If you decide to continue reading the strip, start at the beginning.
http://assets.amuniversal.com/4824d7807d13012ee3c400163e41dd5b
http://assets.amuniversal.com/e9aa1ba07dcd012ee3c400163e41dd5b
The candidate list must have been of appalling quality
The referenced Washington Post article is proof, if any is needed, that the formerly reputable publication has slipped moorings from reality. Waaaaay down at the bottom they put:
The translation of this is: “once we get a global government, it might not do the right things”. Nowhere does WaPo consider the risk of many current national governments (pre-eminent among being the US) (a) destroying the ability/capacity of their populations to build wealth and (b) spending themselves into abject poverty. The odds: damn near certain the way things are going.
If the EU is an indication, super-national governments are worse in this respect most national ones. Consider the examples of N. Korea, Zimbabwe, Cuba and Venezuela scaled up to global proportions — need a stiff drink yet?
And Pierrehumbert is scared of a little more CO2?
… + 10,000
“Current technology can make it easier to create a totalitarian state.”
The greatest risk at present for totalitarian governance might very well be United Nations. United Nations is responsible for creating the climate hysteria which has even resulted in senators and activist calling RICO investigations upon opponents.
“It can’t happen here” is always wrong: a dictatorship can happen anywhere.”
― Karl Popper, Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography
“The Utopian attempt to realize an ideal state, using a blueprint of society as a whole, is one which demands a strong centralized rule of a few, and which is therefore likely to lead to a dictatorship.”
― Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Volume 1 : The Spell of Plato
Or as the Daleks say to Dr. Who all the time: ‘Exterminate’.
Now just define nation so that US is a nation (ask any Mexican), and Europe is not. And then point out how EU administration is worse than say Obama administration. We have a vote. If we vote social democrats and green politicians, or even communists to the EU parliament, then really it is our own fault.
I don’t like EU, but if you think what was before it, iron curtain in the middle of Europe, in the middle of Germany to say exactly, Russia strangling half of it, then maybe, just maybe it IS better to have strong EU and as weak as possible Russia. You know, EU is not even very strong yet.
Think not about Cuba scaled to global proportions, think about Putin scaled to a world leader proportions. Shudder.
I really place polical catastrophes much above anthropogenic global warming. War included in those.
Yikes. And this is one of the “smartest” on his side of the argument.
[snip – policy violations 1. It is a comment you posted elsewhere, not a comment made here 2. It’s chock full of Doug Cotton type stuff -mod]
How extraordinary. Pierrehumbert resembles a wino who used to tramp the streets of Oxford in the late 60s/early 70s. Nicknamed “brother” because that is how he addressed everyone he spoke to. I don’t think they are the same person. “Brother” used to speak more sense even on his “red” (bad) days than this guy.
“After a couple of decades of studying climate change and teaching at the University of Chicago, Raymond Pierrehumbert…”
—————–
Ah yes, the University of Chicago, that enlightened institution which gave tenure, Distinguished Professorship and retirement to William Ayers, former Weather Underground co- founder and violent, radical, revolutionary Communist bomber of buildings, given a free pass for his actions by “the law”. Ayers is/was an education curriculum theorist who is no doubt responsible for much of what passes as today’s public school curriculum, which is no doubt responsible for much of today’s societal… well, you get the picture.
Ayers is also responsible for introducing Barack Obama to Chicago politics and advising him throughout his political career. Again, you probably get the picture. Ayers was most recently photographed at the recent Chicago riots in and around Donald Trump’s rally. Trump, you see, doesn’t carry the seal of approval of the world’s ruling elite.
Pierrehumbert’s musings and promotion to Oxford are just another little piece of the puzzle.
Mere coincidence no doubt.
One of the skills of this administration is the institutionalization of their programs by appointing the right people to key leadership positions deep within organizations.
The good professor appears to fit the bill and what better place than the lofty Oxford.
Ayers was at the University of Illinois Chicago, not the same place at all. He does live close to U of C though, in fact he and Obama were neighbors.
I stand corrected. I’ve misunderstood his school affiliation for years.
The stupid, it burns.
In a very real sense the professor is correct. There is now of huge amounts of science piling up which shows that CAGW is not the disaster once thought. In spite of this, an international juggernaut continues strengthening, which advocates policies which will be catastrophic to all of western civilization if put in force.
One can sense a choice coming up, a fork in the road for the western world. Will we stay true to the foundations of western civilization such as logic and reason from the Age of Enlightenment, science from the Renaissance, technology from the Industrial Revolution? Or will we succumb to the primitive fears and superstitions of the mindless savage? Will we be ruled by our fears, and institute policies which will so degrade our societies, that we will be helpless in the face of barbarian hoards and all will be lost.
Can we still use logic and reason, and science and knowledge to understand that there are forces that are trying to frighten us. Can we resist succumbing to our fears, or not? This is the fork in the road.
Here is Dr. Sallie Baliunas on Weather Cooking:
Is this our past, or our future?
Beat me to it. The professor is right of course, just not in the way he thinks. Every university that has gone all-in on CAGW has failed The Enlightenment and stupified the Age of Reason. They call themselves “post-modern”, but in order to transcend Modernity they need to have reached it first. After decades of witch hunting for deniers, I wonder if the Enlightenment wasn’t a pinnacle of some sort, which we are now descending back down from on the other side.
Fascinating perspective. She does a fine job painting the reality of how one goes from bad weather … to panic … to superstition … to the villified. She also describes how the defenders of logic and reason were threatened as deniers. While I can understand the DESIRE to want to be protected as a scientist, I think it is folly to expect that the protection comes from the very society that is embroiled in the tug of war. Scientists would do well to secure their own protection that is not beholden to the society they do battle in.
TonyL – it is our present. The consequences are happening now. Just got my renewal for my property insurance and even with dropping coverage for “tree and shrub debris removal … for damage caused by windstorms” to avoid “possible premium increase.” the premium has gone up about 15%!?!
It then goes on to say “With climate change, windstorms have become more frequent in recent years.” A bald-faced lie since the accumulated cyclonic energy (A.C.E.) index shows no such trend, no increase in number or intensity of wind storms.
So even though this whole thing is a huge marketing exercise in mass deception – the effects are starting. They are going with the assumption that it doesn’t matter if it’s actually true, just that it is accepted. Of course I read here years ago where insurance companies were some of the first on the bandwagon since they could see the financial benefits.
Useful idiots like Pierrehumbert will continue to thrive since they add to the chorus, and we pay with real dollars for a fiction. A lot of professors tend to be some of the most disconnected from reality-types you’ll encounter and can’t get enough of rotting out the foundations from the inside.
Pierrehumbert makes outrageous comments which are completely removed from observations and analysis to demonstrate that he is a member of the cult of CAWG. It is politically correct, politically necessary to support and push CAGW.
I am curious as to when and how quickly that paradigm will end in response to global cooling.
The past cyclic warming periods ended abruptly based on Greenland ice sheet temperatures.
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2016/anomnight.3.17.2016.gif
http://academic.evergreen.edu/z/zita/teaching/CClittell/readings/Jan31_Overpeck_and_Cole_2006.pdf
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~peter/Resources/Holocene.vs.Stage5e.html
When Professor Pierrehumbert insists that we all bow down to Carbon Dioxide and offer up human sacrifices of cold, starving masses in an attempt to appease such a vengeful and omnipotent God that he believes is capable of doing anything and everything, he’s already failed his final exam.
and offer up human sacrifices of cold, starving masses
He didn’t do that.
Take cheap energy away and there will be starving masses. We can of course pretend to do something but the reductions AGW proponents want to atmospheric CO2 would cause huge destruction; and not only that; reducing CO2 would directly cause declining agricultural production causing a wave of hunger deaths.
Telling CO2 emissions need to disappear, or atmospheric CO2 needs to decline from the current concentration is equal to telling we need to sacrifice people.
I really trust there will be a better option than acting prematurely now to regret later.
Take cheap energy away and there will be starving masses.
1) That’s not obvious to me. What number of people will starve for each increase in the cost of energy?
2) There’s lots of energy in the same ball-park cost as fossil fuels. Personal PV beats grid parity in most places. Wind beats grid parity in most places at the moment. Nuclear is in the ballpark and kills a lot fewer people than coal. These don’t release CO2.
AGW proponents want to atmospheric CO2 would cause huge destruction; and not only that; reducing CO2 would directly cause declining agricultural production causing a wave of hunger deaths.
1) An important impact of global warming is the drop in agricultural production. So releasing CO2 also causes that.
2) Farm machinery would work fine as battery electric, in many circumstances because they don’t have a huge commute.
I really trust there will be a better option than acting prematurely now to regret later.
The best option seems to have been act about 20 years ago. But while we are now looking at funding some kind of sequestration as well as suffering the economic consequences of more rapid decarbonisation of the economy. We are already regretting not acting earlier.
Why do they always look like that?
Yeah, I concur, when any person, academic or not, looks like a “bag of crap” I tend to discount anything they have to say.
FYI, my father had a PhD, I have a PhD, we never looked like we just stepped out of that really big dryer at the local wash-n-dry.
Tom and Mark,
My sentiments exactly. I didn’t even listen to the audio. I can tell by looking at the picture that he has been drinking at the tenured water cooler way too long and has no idea what the real world beyond his little campus is actually like.
I’m surprised he hasn’t dyed his skin an icky green colour
When I worked at a large research organisation we had a theory that these people were model failures that were kept in a cupboard for times when research staff were difficult to find.
They were never considered useful. just there to make up the numbers.
Tom in Florida……….Why do they always look like that?
Asked at the end of his days what he had learned from his long and influential life, he is alleged to have replied: ” Two things, money counts and people who look stupid usually are stupid!”
Good enough?
Cheers
That was George Bernard Shaw by the way.
we’ve heard this kind of language before during the heydays of the anthropogenic ozone depletion final exam
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2748016
We have Lewendowsky, Jones and now Pierrehumbert.
If you send us Turney, I think England just might explode
I’m sure in the minds of some they snicker and see it as a gift for your colonialism.
For diversity and inclusivity purposes you can have Suzuki too!
It’s a great revelation to know that the “Goodness” of humanity is our salvation.
I’m reminded of the Mae West’s reply when an admirer exclaimed “Oh, my Goodness!” Upon seeing Mae’s new mink coat.
“Dearie, Goodness had nothing to do with it.”
Isn’t it time to do the official “climate scientist decimation” ?
If ‘Climate Challenge’ is the final exam, then ’20th Century Fiction’ is the curriculum.
BAM!