Guest essay by Dr. G. Cornelis van Kooten
Who are “climate skeptics”?
Greg Garrard, Associate Professor of Sustainability at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan, thinks he knows. In fact, he believes “environmentalists” generally “know who climate skeptics are: oil company shills, religious fundamentalists and neoliberal cheerleaders.”
With that courteous and respectful opening, Garrard issued a call for papers for the symposium “Who Do They Think They Are? Cultures of Climate Skepticism, Anti-Environmentalism, and Conservative Environmentalism,” scheduled for June 6–8, 2016, at Garrard’s campus in Kelowna, B.C. One knows not whether to laugh or cry at Garrard saying “this symposium seeks to understand ‘the enemy’, challenging reductive stereotypes and homogenizing assumptions in the interests of constructive democratic debate” (emphasis added).
Clearly the conference’s sole purpose is to denigrate those with views contrary to environmentalists’, particularly the so-called global warming consensus. The likelihood that it will lead to “constructive democratic debate” is approximately zero.
As my friend and colleague Jeffrey Foss, former head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Victoria, warns:
It’s like reading Malleus Maleficarum, aka The Witches Hammer, a 15th century tract on the detection and destruction of witches and warlocks—and it almost makes my stomach turn to think that I and my friends are among the witches and warlocks of today’s green druids. … Thank goodness we have, at least formally, freedom of thought and expression. That freedom, however, is under attack and is bending under the pressure of this attack….
David K. Johnston, another philosophy professor at the University of Victoria, suggested that the organizer might be amenable to receiving climate skeptics’ papers or “artefacts”, Foss countered:
The first paragraph is a scurrilous manifesto tarring “climate scepticism”. The next paragraph presents some sketches of “climate scepticism”—sketches that seem quite believable to me. But apparently not to their author, who in the third paragraph returns to treating ‘climate skepticism’ as a social phenomenon that needs to be analysed and addressed—rather than a set of beliefs that are supported by reason and evidence.
So climate skepticism is not addressed at all. To do so requires studying the actual climate and asking whether it is accurately described in global warming theories. There is no invitation … to do any such thing. The concepts of truth and falsehood do not arise … presumably because these concepts themselves are seen as tools of suppression used by the “elites” who wield power over us all. Instead, it is the socio-psychological syndrome of “anti-environmental discourses” that are to be analysed.
Foss’s comments are dead on. This type of thing does indeed harken back to witch hunts. Certainly, it is anti-science and deeply rooted in ideology.
One of the ironies of Garrard’s conference is that he himself is a critic of apocalyptic views in his book Ecocriticism (2004), writing: “Just like Christian millennialism, environmental apocalypticism has had to face the embarrassment of failed prophecy even as it has been unable to relinquish the trope altogether” (p. 100). For some reason, Garrard has now embraced this failed trope in the belief that climate apocalypticism, unlike all previous environmental apocalyptisms, is the real deal.
It is by no means clear how we can counter such ideological and anti-scientific views.
Consider two issues today: GMOs and climate change. The science (at least that considered “overwhelming”) says GMOs are safe and climate change is primarily human caused. Environmentalists overwhelmingly accept the climate change “science”, no questions asked, but reject the GMO “science”. Why? The GMO “science” says human intervention in nature can be positive, while the climate change “science” says it is negative. So the position taken by environmentalists is consistent: it has nothing to do with science, but everything to do with their anti-human agendas.
The author was in Edmonton recently for his mother’s 90th birthday—a remarkably long time to live not just in the long history of humanity but even today. But she was scooped by someone in her seniors’ home who turned 100 the next day!
Not too long ago we could count on one hand the number of people who reached 100—and they got a lovely letter from the Canadian Prime Minister. People over 90 were rare, and 60 was considered old.
What happened?
The environment improved as a result of human intervention. Since the Second World War:
- water and air quality have improved tremendously (at least in the West),
- improvements in nutrition, housing, and health care have raised life expectancy and reduced infant and child mortality (sparking a short-term “population explosion” that is levelling off worldwide and already reversed in many developed countries),
- cheap fossil fuels have made it possible to keep warm/cool on the coldest/hottest days, and
- this same cheap energy enabled us in the West, even the poorest (except the homeless who often suffer from mental illness and whose plight environmentalists mostly ignore), to live richer than kings of old.
All these good things are now under threat because of a theory backed by flimsy evidence but promoted as Armageddon.
The problem is that the climate change agenda has little to do with climate change, let alone science. After all, most people’s position regarding the science of global warming comes from newspaper reports that sensationalize the evidence of a future catastrophe, however skimpy, while downplaying or even ignoring any “good news” (e.g., higher crop yields from enhanced CO2) or evidence to the contrary.
For example, while the media continue to harp on the threat fossil fuel consumption poses to polar bears, the science is not supportive. In a recent review article, scientists concluded that “some species thought to be dependent on summer sea ice (e.g., polar bears) survived through [ice-free] periods. In contrast, during glacial periods the much smaller Arctic Ocean and much of the adjacent continents were covered with massive ice sheets, thick ice shelves, and sea ice, making large regions virtually uninhabitable to most species that inhabit today’s Arctic.”
Likewise, peer-reviewed papers skeptical of the “climate consensus” orthodoxy are flooding into scientific journals. Since the beginning of 2015, more than 300 published, peer-reviewed articles have refuted the “consensus” that humans are primarily responsible for global warming, attributing climate change more to natural factors. But the media largely ignore these.
Instead, the environmental movement relies on the scare of climate catastrophe as a tactic to oppose capitalism and justify government intervention to restrict what citizens can do (for the good of all, but of course the good as they see it!), eventually leading to global institutions that would control what citizens can do. As Foss points out:
In the 2009 COP convention in Copenhagen, the draft agreement was an agreement to “fine” the developed countries to provide cash for the organization of a world socialist government. Our silly news outlets reported simply what they were told to report in releases to the press by the UN managers….
As in the recent charade in Paris, those in developed countries heard only that there was agreement to reduce CO2 emissions (somewhere, somehow) and nothing at all about the global administrative body (or government) that would be set up to command virtually every aspect of our economies (and hence our lives). The document itself—the draft agreement—was available to me at the time from a source who claimed it was publicly available. If so, apparently not one reporter of a major news outlet (so far as I’m aware) both read it and realized it was newsworthy.
Of course, whether climate change is partly anthropogenic or primarily of natural origins, and whether mitigation is preferred to adaptation as a policy response, much scare mongering by the media about human-induced climate change has driven the political agenda—something Greeenpeace co-founder and former president Patrick Moore discusses astutely in Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist. Such tactics play into the hands of those organizing the UBC Okanagan conference I mentioned at the start of this article—those who see climate skeptics as neoliberals, Christian fundamentalists, creationists, holocaust deniers, anti-science, communists, and who knows what else.
Of course, there is nothing wrong per se with a global administrative body, perhaps under the purview of the United Nations, which would act to correct the worst externalities and improve the well being of global citizens, especially the globe’s most wretched. But would such a body really bring about a utopia where there is no war and no poverty? Or only one, like the totalitarian states with which we’re all familiar, a world with no freedom?
History suggests that utopia always comes with corruption of the worst kind, totalitarianism designed to achieve goals set out by naïve lobbyists but resulting instead in death squads, gulags, and neighbor-spying-on-neighbor to keep the elite in power.
The poor will not benefit. Instead, those who are reasonably well off today will be reduced to the same state as today’s poor—all except the rich and powerful elite running this dictatorship. Living standards will decline, as will life expectancy, and everyone will live under fear and tyranny.
This is the eventual outcome of global governance. And much like the Israelites of old, they will cry to God for help because there is no one else.
G. Cornelis van Kooten, Ph.D., is Professor of Economics and Research Chair in Environmental Studies and Climate, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. He is the author of Climate Change, Climate Science and Economics: Prospects for an Alternative Energy Future and many papers in peer-reviewed journals on conventional and alternative energies.
…Does Demonizing the Other Side Promote Constructive Debate Over Climate Change?…
If I really wanted to know the truth about something, I would listen to people with an open mind, and encourage them to tell me what they knew.
If, on the other hand, I had a nice little earner going, but the people who were paying me were starting to get suspicious that all the things I had said would happen didn’t seem to be doing so, I would be VERY anxious to stop anyone raising any doubts, and would try to get the disbelievers shut down and unable to talk anywhere. Failing that, I would try to demonize them so that no one would listen to them anyway…
If the good sustainment Professor is branding me as an “oil company shill”, and I have actually never ever received any such sustainability funding from ANY oil company, am I allowed to report those lost sustainability funds as an uncollectible bad debt loss on my income tax return ??
How does Professor Garrard make ends meet if he doesn’t get sustainability funding from any oil company ??
G
You have to understand, hypocrisy is NOT a negative attribute to zealots!
Hmmm…So some jumped-up, hayseed Professor-type wants to hold a symposium where he and his fellow, bush-league, Philosopher King wannabes can meet in the sticks to ponder deeply the head-shop-guru, zen-booger koan: “Who do they think they are?” The “they” in that question being those (a. k. a. “the enemy”) who might have some reservations about the good Professor’s chekist-friendly, fatwa-normative, group-think carbon-phobia. Haven’t we seen this movie before?
And I note that our hive-hero, symposium organizer doesn’t even plan to hold his up-coming, Gaia gab-fest as a zero-carbon, video-conferenced event, but rather it’s to be an on-site, hive-swarm carbon-wallow–the Professor’s very own hick-university place of employment, being staked out as ground-zero for the whole silly-assed, waste of time affair, to be exact. A venue we can well imagine is a welcoming “safe-space” for chatterbox, grab-ass, academic parasites, who just love to hear themselves chatter. Again, so what else is new?
And, finally, given that the hive-orthodoxy tags anthropogenic C02 as a baby-killer and a polar bear killer, I’d like to respectfully ask of those planning to attend this improbable eco-confab, under discussion, just “Who do they think they are?”, considering the lethal, C02-spew their on-site attendance will produce?
Can you please stop using terms for farmers as derogatory. I understand your anger, but there is no need to use terms like “hick” and “hayseed” as insults. That demeans hardworking people by comparing them to this fearmonger.
@benofhouston
Hey Ben. I considered the “insensitivity” of my comment when I wrote it. And, for what it’s worth, I’m the multi-generational product of farmers, on both sides of my family, reaching back to the earliest days of the neolithic, I suspect–that multi-generational, farm-boy inheritance broken only recently by “The Great Depression”, when my father’s family lost their farm, and “The Good War”, when my mother, with her Indian and Indian-fighter, agriculturalist heritage found employment in the war industries of California. So I’m in no way contemptuous of those who are honest laborers and who are, as well, good and decent men and women of wholesome character and self-reliance–especially farmers.
But you see, Ben, our goof-off “betters” think otherwise. They only consider rip-off, make-a-buck scams and hustles, aimed at us coolie-trash herdling-nobodies (their view of you and moi, ben), as a fit employment for their Philosopher King/Queen, power-and-control ambitions. And our natural, “golden” aristocrats also think that they are “cool” and so, so superior to us of the groaning, expendable hoi-polloi, who toil in the fields and punch the clock, to produce the wealth our predatory-elite so very much want to grab from us and fritter away on their frivolous, brazen-hypocrite, carbon-piggie pleasures.
So my only intent in directing “bucolic” abuse at the good Professor, of the topside post, was to puncture his puffed-up, cool-dude pretensions–my estimate being that the Professor’s fragile-ego depends on a sense of snobbish elevation above us “little guys”, and that by me bringin’ him down to our level, I just might push one or more of his hive-bozo buttons, big-time. An end always to be desired, I recommend, Ben.
Remember, Ben, we are the hive-tool Professor’s “enemy”, and so we must use what we have, at hand, to take the fight to the hive–a fight that the hive picked in the first place, I might add. And, in that regard, my sense of the matter, derived from my farmer stock ancestry, is that our “peon survival strategy” is to bide our time, play to our oppressor’s pompous-ass affectations, and then to make our “move” when we are pressed beyond our durance, at the time and place that suits us (non-violently and fully within the law, of course). It’s called “peasant cunning”, Ben, as you know.
Mike, I believe you are correct in the main. My prior posts point to the conclusion that the Professor’s is a low-rent continuation of the attack on the credibility of outsiders’ work to understand the true climate science. His little twist is that he is directing a broad literary critique of skeptical work to pick at individual foibles. His cadres will assume alarmist “facts” and try to show how weak skeptical papers are because of the lack of scientific “understanding” and backward literary standards of their authors. Elitism in academia.
Well said.
…Does Demonizing the Other Side Promote Constructive Debate Over Climate Change?…
No, but that is not going to stop people on all sides of the debate from doing it. I see a lot of it in the comments in WUWT.
Red,
“No, but that is not going to stop people on all sides of the debate from doing it. I see a lot of it in the comments in WUWT.”
Ah…..thank you for sharing your very non-constructive opinion, about someone else’s opinion.
The debate was declared “over” before it even began…..so much for constructive huh? If this good Professor wanted a constructive debate, he’d ASK skeptics to tell him who they are personally, rather than relying on the magical powers of environ-mentalists, who just “generally know what skeptics are”.
Environmentalists–
Environment-“the surroundings or conditions in which a person, animal, or plant lives or operates”
Mentalist-“a magician who performs feats that apparently demonstrate extraordinary mental powers, such as mind-reading.”
Roha…”No, but that is not going to stop people on all sides of the debate from doing it. I see a lot of it in the comments in WUWT.”
========================================
A man walks down the street and gets mugged. He calls the mugger a human scumbag piece of something. Was the mugged man demonizing the mugger, or was he calling it accurately?
(Roha, just so we are clear, the multi trillion dollar political movement of CAGW is the mugger in this story)
There are a few people that deserve such derision. However most people are just misinformed or truly and genuinely think that what they are doing is best. Insults for them aren’t helpful and just lock them out of the conversation.
The Nigerian minister’s article on how hunting bans empoverished people and threatened lives did more good for our cause than 10 million facebook posts because it caused people to think. The thought that they might be doing more harm than good literally never crossed people’s minds.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/world/a-hunting-ban-saps-a-villages-livelihood.html
“A man walks down the street and gets mugged. He calls the mugger a human scumbag piece of something”
The mugger hears about it in the news and sues for violation of his right to “respect, right to voice his opinion (the news reporter failed to ask him his point of view), and for lack of consideration for his culture (he claims that mugging people is a cultural thing).
Fiction today, but for how long?
Demonizing the other side never promotes constructive dialog.
But globalwarmists don’t want constructive dialog. They want totalitarian control, and the ability to silence critics.
“They want totalitarian control, and the ability to silence critics.”
“Demonizing the other side never promotes constructive dialog.”
Nick, Richard was just telling us who “THEY think they are”, which is how Professor Garrard initiates a “constructive democratic debate”. So all better. Right?
Nick, we of the skeptical persuasion have tried reason, facts and figures, giving the believers of catastrophe the benefit of doubt, we’ve made excuses for them and we’ve tried to teach them. Still they continue with their fingers in their ears, refusing to look, listen or learn, denigrating all who stand in their way. It’s perfectly reasonable to have doubts now and to express aloud what we see and hear most clearly. These people do not want debate.
Nick is the absolute summit of playing dumb for the cause .
Nick stokes the fire. It’s remarkable how some folks feel compelled to live up to their names.
“They want totalitarian control, and the ability to silence critics.”
Nick, how is that demonizing when numerous leaders of the green movement in the United nations have blatantly stated as much. Have been ignorant of the recent RICO threats. Did you miss Obama threats to deniers? Did you fail to read any books on the subject? I recommend “Blue Planet in Green Shackle’s.”
Did you miss threats to jail skeptics? Did you not see the 350.org video? What planet have you been living on?
Nick Stokes, How, in speaking of the political movement of CAGW is saying…
==================
“They want totalitarian control, and the ability to silence critics.”
==================
anything but truthful?
Nick, did you not read about the recent RICO collusion by politicians?
Did you not read about the president calling thousands of PHD scientists deniers?
Did you miss the 350.org video?
Have you missed entire books on the subject? (I recommend “Blue Planet in Green Shackle’s”)
Did you miss the quotes from numerous U.N. leading “environmentalists” directly stating the real goal is global government?
What planet have you been living on?
“They want totalitarian control, and the ability to silence critics” (Nick Stokes).
==================================
What’s your point? They admit it themselves.
“However much people profess to care about climate change, they do not seem willing to vote for this – nor do politicians seem willing to really try and persuade them,” he said. “All the evidence from the past 15 years leads me to conclude that actually delivering 1.5C is simply incompatible with democracy” (Professor Michael Grubb of University College London UK Telegraph 12 Dec. 2015.
If you look for them you can find many other quotes from alarmists in a similar vein.
“Professor Michael Grubb of University College London”
This argument is just saying “They demonize us, we demonize demons. That’s them.”
But who is Michael Grubb? Does he speak for all of “them”? And in any case, what is he saying? He’s saying that 1.5C is incompatible with democracy, and you immediately jump to conclude that he wants authoritarian rule. I think he’s just saying that we probably won’t manage 1.5C.
And looking at the rest, it’s just a collection of spotty grievances, hardly any of which have anything to do with “totalitarian control”. Yet that is the blanket statement. “They want totalitarian control, and the ability to silence critics.”
Is accurately describing the other side, now demonization?
Yes it can be, even if you state what is 100% unvarnished truth. Consider the first mate who wrote in the ship’s log:
It was a true statement, wasn’t it? I wonder why the captain wasn’t thrilled.
On the other hand, if you want to start a fight, the truth often does quite nicely. 🙂
Sorry Nick, your assertions of spotty incidents is piss poor observation of the trillion dollar industry of CAGW.
Nick, did you not read about the recent RICO collusion by politicians?
Did you not read about the president calling thousands of PHD scientists deniers?
Did you miss the 350.org video?
Have you missed entire books on the subject? (I recommend “Blue Planet in Green Shackle’s”)
Did you miss the quotes from numerous U.N. leading “environmentalists” directly stating the real goal is global government?
What planet have you been living on?
The meaner the better for ratings and coverage.
“….’environmentalists’ generally ‘know who climate skeptics are: oil company shills, religious fundamentalists and neoliberal cheerleaders.’”
How many of us actually fall into those categories?
I dunno, I always thought it was Shell Oil not Shill Oil
..What, you haven’t gotten your cheque from “Big Oil” companies yet ?? /sarc
Few.
Which just goes to show who the truly clueless are on this issue.
Not me.
Accuracy is not important. Destroying all opposition to yourself is.
For those oil companies that have gas interests – ie. most of them – there is massive profit to be made by putting coal companies out of business. They can do this under the CO2-mitigation banner quite safely, because there is no viable alternative to oil for most of oil’s uses. [Electric cars are no threat, because they need electricity, which can be generated more cheaply using gas than by any other means, except possibly coal.]. It is absurd that the enviros continue to attack the oil companies, but it is very convenient for the oil companies because it keeps attention off what they are actually doing. But the enviros (well, some of them anyway) don’t understand any of this – they believe their own publicity and are suing Exxon. This is forcing Exxon to fight back, and there is now the delightful prospect that this will bring down the whole pack of cards. Maybe. Unfortunately, I suspect that both sides will engineer their way out of it intact, while still ensuring the end of coal in the USA, thus handing over even more of the world’s economy to the USA’s competitors. Popcorn futures are up yet again …..
This brings to mind that line about feeding the crocodile …
Got mine! Exxon pays me $0.05/gallon to use their credit card at an Exxon gas station.
One in a thousand would be my best guess.
You know Bob, your question triggered an opposing question in my head….how much research has been done to determine what it is, exactly, that “environmentalists generally KNOW” about who climate skeptics are vs what “environmentalists generally INSINUATE” about them? Has there been any investigation to determine if these “environmentalists” actually have some sort of paranormal cognitive function that allows them to accurately identify “oil company shills, religious fundamentalists, and neoliberal cheerleaders”? Or on the other side, if they are so cognitively impaired that they don’t understand the difference between facts and propaganda?
I mean…..maybe I’m the only one that missed this….but it IS possible that this whole time we’ve been completely oblivious to the fact that the word “environ-MENTALIST” is actually a perfect derivation of the two words it combines!:
Environment- “the surroundings or conditions in which a person, animal, or plant lives or operates”.
and
Mentalist- “a magician who performs feats that apparently demonstrate extraordinary mental powers, such as mind-reading.”
And if that is indeed the case, then there must be some sort of scientific protocols in place to determine who actually HAS those powers vs those who are just faking it. 🙂
Haven’t seen one about environmentalists. However I have seen several studies that compare what conservatives know about liberal positions vs what liberals know about conservative positions.
In every single case, conservatives come out way better informed.
I get 4 cents off a litre of petrol if I shop at Coles or Woolies. That’s the closest I get.
Bob,
“How many of us actually fall into those categories?”
I see the “list” as a “divide and conquer” staple . . the whole thing reeks of psyop (psychological operation) to me. I caution against accepting any of itr as honest human expression.
“How many of us actually fall into those categories?”
Oh, about the same number of those “witches” who actually were witches.
How can you believe them about climate when they are so wrong about the skeptics?
Don’t know where I’d fit in.
Oil shills? I’ve never received a shilling from any oil company. But, then again, I live in the USA. Maybe I should move somewhere where they use shillings so I can cash in?
Religious fundamentalists? Sounds a bit like an all purpose label one would stick above the pigeon hole they shove people into that believe something other than they do. The stronger the belief, the bolder the font.
“Neoliberal cheerleaders”? Not sure what a “neoliberal” is. An Obama liberal versus a JFK liberal? A Neanderthal that stomps out food stamps?
The labels people want to stick on other people are generally go small
Wow, Anti-Environmentalism, I’d never heard of that one before. Must a branch of anti-science that I’m not fami1iar with.
With a job title like Associate Professor of Sustainability it’s pretty obvious he must totally open-minded and objective.
It’s a variant of the standard left wing trope.
IE, unless you worship the environment above all other things and take a position that no changes that are caused by man are acceptable, no matter how minor.
Than you are anti-environment.
It’s right up there with any opposition to the latest expansion of welfare means you are anti-poor and want brown skinned people to die.
Discussing climate change and “renewable energy” online tends to get like discussing religion with Jehovah’s Witnesses. The advocates tend to know a limited number of talking points, but do not much care about their validity. Attempts to enforce that sort of othodoxy very soon leads to challenging the motives of the speaker rather than what they are saying. I have been called a troll, vendido, or a paid spokesman for winning an exchange. It is very difficult to avoid reciprocating that sort of insult, which most commenters on this site are amazingly able to do.
..Wow, you should be happy they were nice to you !! I’ve had death threats numerous times on liberal blogs because my opinion was ” killing all the Polar Bears ” !!
One young communist that I debated declared that any rational person would be willing to kill someone they caught raping their mother.
According to him, anyone who didn’t worship nature the way he did was guilty of raping mother nature and deserved to die.
What he forgot is that you can only kill someone if it is “legitimate” rape.
In his “mind” raping the planet was legitimate rape.
Only after many years of the same garbage being heaped on me have I just gotten so sick of it I find myself losing all patience and even my manners.
Seems to me that the Best thing to do would be to fill the Symposium with Climate Realists. If skeptics could garner about 75% of the available seating, it would serve to demonstrate that his sides “Witch Hunt” tactics won’t work to silence what would then be the majority of the symposium attendees.
400 km drive for me.
I doubt we could get 75% but it would be fun to have a cadre of skeptics show up.
Road trip? Who else is “in the area”?
I wish I was! I’d join you like a shot. I’m in Australia – too far away.
Perhaps we could get ourselves arrested for being ‘non-believers? [tongue-in-cheek]
Should we come in costume as “oil company shills, religious fundamentalists and neoliberal cheerleaders”?
Come dressed as the Exxon Tiger wearing necklaces of Scallop Shells and BP green coats with Red, White and Blue Chevrons on the sleeves carrying signs that say “Missed my BIG OIL check and this is all I had to wear”
LOL, just add a berka and pom-poms.
…but how does a neo-liberal dress?
wearing buttons that say BIG OIL DOESN’T SUPPORT ME…I SUPPORT BIG OIL
Be sure you bring a maimed eagle or buzzard (or even better, a whooping crane).
Can we bring tomatoes into the conference?
Who is going to save the planet and its people from those trying to save the planet?
..Yes, we need a Reality Warrior to defeat all the Eco-Terrorists and bring some sanity back to science . I prefer Cruz, but Trump will do …!
Steve
That has to be the greatest question facing the world today.
Unfortunately it’s up to us.
Steve, the planet is going to be fine. I don’t think we have the power to “save” it any more than we do the power to destroy it. If the majority of the people on it are too stupid to comprehend the stupidity of those who pretend that they can save the planet….then the gene pool needs a nice big dose of chlorine anyway. 🙂
Are you channeling Carlin there? I believe his quote was “the world will be just fine…it’s the people who are (bleeped).
The UBC is heavily invested in climate change…they have courses….even online courses
….that generate income
So yes, it benefits them to keep the ball rolling
Please take this message of the environmentalists to heart and the commentary of those here before me as well. This is not about science or truth or even ideology. This is about forging weapons from whatever material that can be found to promote the will to rule.
The governments of the Western world as well as lessor institutions and movements have been captured by a cabal which I shall call the Plutocracy for its agents are well financed and heavily ensconced in the upper regions of the financial system and are often wealthy in their own right.
Its basic method of conquest uses all available avenues of approach to undermine its opposition. It will use military means when available and suitable but military action is only one small part of its program.
It promotes policies of Austerity and promotes the issuance of massively excessive debt to undermine whole economies. The profits gained are used to further promote its operations of conquest in other areas of society. It seeks to undermine the economies of all nations for poor people are easier to rule than rich people.
People searching for a crust of bread have no time for opposition or politics of any sort. They seek to operate the world at the level of subsistence for the economic leverage over people is maximal. The smallest economic contraction can tip large numbers of people over the line from subsistence into death, a true weapon of mass destruction wrung from the fabric of economic existence.
It seeks control of the press to attack systematically any opposition; it promotes compliant and weak politicians who will do its bidding to secure control over government. It promotes all ideas in society, philosophical, religious, political, scientific, or legal with which it can sow dissension and division.
It undermines education to force ignorance and irrelevance down the throats of the public to secure its authority. It turns the schools into prisons and forces the students to listen to its destructive doctrines throughout the day; the better to indoctrinate and recruit future soldiers of occupation to serve in all walks of life.
It appeals to crazies and opportunists of all stripes, those with fanatical conceptions to promote and those who seek to profit whatever the cost. It uses fools and dupes wherever they may be found, working them into the fabric of its designs.
It undermines the free pursuit of knowledge. It finances the careers of rigid minded scientific bureaucrats who have squelched the free development of scientific ideas and have turned scientific theory into scientific dogma. It then uses that dogma to promote policies and actions destructive of the well being and good order of the people across the world.
It represents 21st century warfare at its finest and most thoroughly diabolical though its roots are very old. It is the true embodiment of full spectrum dominance. Its goal is to rule one of the most finely drawn tyrannies ever devised. Its power is to be ubiquitous and total. Its motto is submit or die.
It is very late in the day. World War III has been raging for some time now yet most people do not realize they are at war against an implacable enemy. Many may never realize that they are losing a most desperate war for survival.
Whenever you read, see or hear of the inexplicable, the nonsensical, the horrible, the perverse and the cruel just remember the world is at war and you are the intended victim.
“..The Greens are too Yellow to admit that they are actually Red ( communist ) ! ” ..Lord Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley..
“challenging reductive stereotypes ”
Oh, like: “climate skeptics are: oil company shills, religious fundamentalists and neoliberal cheerleaders”, you mean?
Good luck with homogenizing your assumptions, Ass. Prof. Garrard
Greg-
This is the one that got me- “homogenizing assumptions”-
Homogenize- “make uniform or similar.
synonyms: make uniform, make similar, standardize, unite, integrate, fuse, merge, blend, meld, coalesce, amalgamate, combine”
THAT has irrational, illogical, and WTH written all over it! Nothing like a “scientist” having the goal to standardize, blend, or merge what a group “speculates or believes without PROOF”.
The stupid….it burns.
…does not work with the surface record either.
Perhaps we should schedule a conference on cargo cults and eschatology and invite some of these folks to be living examples of same. This stuff has gone beyond science and become religion I am afraid.
“Perhaps we should schedule a conference on cargo cults and eschatology and invite some of these folks to be living examples of same”
Could even be a diner…
simple-touriste April 21, 2016 at 4:48 pm
and invite some of these folks to be living examples of same”
Could even be a diner…
Despite the Morlock thingy I do not eat junk food. And yes as a public announcement once again I urge anyone to eat their greens. (yellow beans etc count)
michael
Mike,
But “greens” today are nasty….thin, stringy, skin like leather and they taste like tofu. And hopelessness. 🙂
Good comment, Tom Halla. They have pretty limited talking points, after which they tend to just attack emotionally. They’re all convinced that we are destroying the Earth. When the next big scam after AGW comes along, whenever it does, they’ll all believe that one too – because they really _want_ to believe, for some reason.
For those with absolutely no accomplishments in their lives, and no prospect of ever having any, religious movements like this offer a chance at personal redemption.
By hating the right people and spouting dogma with sufficient enthusiasm, they convince themselves that they are part of a righteous movement. This movement gives meaning to their lives that they have been unable to achieve on their own.
I’d like to present a paper for Garrard’s conference. Title:
“Ignorance, prejudice and bias in the academic study of climate skepticism”.
Before you can agree to correct negative externalities, you need to come to a solid consensus regarding whether there actually are negative externalities. Beyond that you have to come to an agreement regarding how bad said externalities are and how much effort is to used to get rid of them.
The vast majority of things that govt seeks to ban as “negative externalities” either aren’t actually negative externalities, or are so trivial in scope that the efforts to eradicate them inevitably result in more damage than did the externalities in the first place.
One of the ironies of Garrard’s conference is that he himself is a critic of apocalyptic views in his book Ecocriticism (2004), writing: “Just like Christian millennialism, environmental apocalypticism has had to face the embarrassment of failed prophecy even as it has been unable to relinquish the trope altogether” (p. 100). For some reason, Garrard has now embraced this failed trope in the belief that climate apocalypticism, unlike all previous environmental apocalyptisms, is the real deal.
Garrad appears to have experienced something of a Damascus road conversion to ecofasc1sm. Thus the virulence of his attitude and genocidal hatred of his religious enemies. If the police raided his home and looked on his computer, they would probably find entries for Zuklon-B crystals in his search engine.
The irony goes even deeper, for Garrard is working to bring about the very apocalyptic conditions (NWO) that he derides as being “failed prophecy.”
“…That none may buy or sell, save they that have the mark.”
Total — Economic — Control. ============== The prophecy stands.
“… it has nothing to do with science, but everything to do with their anti-human agendas.”
============
If I really thought it was an agenda, rather than some kind of psychosis, I’d feel no pity in its destruction.
Maybe they just need to be bombarded with facts ?
Am I the only one who does not consider economics a science?
‘Environmental professionals’ are quick to distance themselves from ‘environmentalists’. Having completed course work for a masters in environmental engineering, I have taken both environmental science and environmental engineering (aka civil engineering) classes. With a few exceptions, environmental science classes are a like political science or economics.
So as a group environmentalists, economists, and political scientists are ignorant of science particularly when comes to making good choices to protect the environment.
Economics is a science like cooking is an art.
@Menicholas
I don’t think you’ll get much traction with that simile. Watching various cooking shows from time to time has led me to understand that the very best cooks are indeed artists.
Economics is indeed very similar (and I have said it myself) to climate science. Systems are usually overspecified and not well understood; models are deterministic and simplified with missing variables, but used anyway for forecasting, and the reliability depends on how and for what reason they are used. Often since the model specification is not well understood they are used in what-if scenario type modeling to compare something versus a base case or versus doing nothing.
In articles that I have written, along with the environmentalists, economists, and political scientists I normally include sociologists, politicians, and (more and more) journalists. But right after the journalists I’d put the economists. (Let us remember what “they” say about economists: “If all the economists in the world were laid end-to-end they’d never reach a conclusion.”)
Ian M
I believe it was LBJ who asked for a one handed economist.
So he couldn’t say “on the other hand”.
Looking back, one has to admire Jerome Ravetz, who despite his nonsensical post-normal science, possessed the personal courage and intellectual integrity to show up at WUWT and argue his case, with the rational and well-educated science-oriented people who hang out here.
Greg Garrard, Associate Professor of Sustainability, is putting on a symposium to explore the environmental accusation that AGW skeptics are “oil company shills, religious fundamentalists and neo-liberal cheerleaders“. All categories of scientific know-nothings. How convenient.
WUWT is known world-wide as a global hotbed of AGW skeptics (serious congratulations are due to Anthony Watts for that achievement). Environmentalists ought to have an easy time of it, coming here and showing everyone up as fools. Where are they? Come Gavin! Come Mann! Come Oreskes! You all know you’ll all get the uncensored opportunity to show us up for the world to see. The welcome carpet has been out for years, and it’s been crickets the whole time.
I wonder if the implications of that burning silence are accessible to Greg Garrard.
Prof. Garrard’s symposium seems a little less biased than presented in the above essay. There’s no obvious evidence in the call for papers that he, himself, shares the environmentalists’ lurid and febrile demonization of AGW skeptics. He wants to explore the brand.
How about inviting him to come here and find out for himself, in real time and first-hand, who those people are that he wants to understand from the third-hand distance of his symposium. His professional page at UBC, by the way, lists his courses and interests, the sum of which demonstrate beyond any doubt that Sustainability Studies has no objective content at all.
In any case, after a visit here, perhaps he’d be equipped to present a paper at his own symposium, with actually informed content and a title such as, ‘You Know, They Do Have a Point.’
The symposium page has a comment box. I’ve left an invitation to visit (it’s in moderation; let’s see if it appears). Anyone else?
You may be right. There is actually a hint of tone that suggests he really may be asking a genuine question.
But I also think he seems like an English-major who has realised that he too can maybe bilk global-warming for some funding.
You’re getting at the heart of the matter. Garrard won’t do what you suggest because this kind of ritual has nothing to do with examining sceptics objectively. I suspect it’s a kind of Reality Warp management.
There are no comments. Evidently, they’ve all been deleted.
Mine certainly has been.
I invited Greg Garrard to come here to WUWT and experience first-hand the skeptics he proposes to experience third-hand at his conference. Guess that doesn’t bear countenancing.
“Utopia” is an appealing idea to Man. The problem with “Utopia” is that there are people involved.
In Man’s quest for “Utopia”, the cream doesn’t rise to the top, the crud does.
(The UN comes to mind.)
If Utopians had opened a book, they would realize the irony in their quest for it, for the name lovingly given this Shangri-la means “No Place”. Pipe dreams, anyone? LOL
“Clearly the conference’s sole purpose is to denigrate those with views contrary to environmentalists’, particularly the so-called global warming consensus.”
—
Not sure they mean to do that — they might just view themselves as explorers who fearlessly confront some primitive tribe of South Sea cannibals, in order to study their religious beliefs. Do they take ritual baths in flowing lava? Keep the spirits of deceased ancestors in empty coke bottles? Stuff like that.
I’m a University of British Columbia graduate and I used to be proud to be one. Now? Not so much. Given the constant attacks on intellectual freedom and free speech by numerous university faculty and officials I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I even went to UBC. On the positive side of the ledger, I’m heartened and somewhat surprised that the defense of free speech wrt questioning Global Warming (sorry, this issue has nothing to do with climate change) is coming from the University of Victoria.
UVIC is usually the hotbed of unpopular, radical, loony and fringe ideas so I’m not sure what to make of it other than free speech must now be considered unpopular, radical, loony and fringe.
Malleus Maleficarum: „Hairesis maxima est opera maleficarum non credere“ = “It is the greatest heresy not to believe in the work of witches”
Lew and other hard core IPCC zealots: “It is the greatest heresy not to believe in future climate disaster by anthropogenic CO2”
Well, the human mind has not very much evolved in the last 500 years… 😉
On the question of
“Does Demonizing the Other Side Promote Constructive Debate Over Climate Change?”
The straightforward answer is obviously no. Demon-ization is a debate tactic that should be called out for what it is.
What is interesting is how it is perceived by people on the sidelines. Having spent years in opinion polling and watching focus groups, the answer is very interesting. Many people get very skeptical as soon as someone uses emotional or extreme language. They know that there are two sides to every argument, and that you need cool heads to look at the facts. They expect everyone wants the best for the planet/country, and of course there are different viewpoints on how to reach those goals. If one side seems overly emotional or accusatory, their arguments lose traction in the middle.
However, the simple good vs. evil / David vs. Goliath story also has appeal to some, and can bring in adherents to the cause, particularly if the story they are telling fits some part of the public’s worldview.
Demonization is probably demon driven!
Greg Garrard, Associate Professor of Sustainability…
The guy has no shame. Obviously he got handed that meaningless title for being an accomplished sycophant (servile flatterer; butt-kisser), because he’s certainly no scientist.
I would love to see him write an article for WUWT. But of course, he won’t; he’s safely ensconced in his Ivory Tower, living off the taxes taken from productive workers.
Those are the nicest things I can say about a jamkoke like that. If he only knew what I really thought about him…
[Comment deleted. same old ID thief. -mod]
Hey db-she DOES know the difference! I owe you $50!! (couldn’t resist a chance to mess with her head…sorry.)
[Note: The impostor posting as ‘Carrie’ is an identity thief. Comments by the ID thief deleted. -mod]
This is sweet! So some identity thief is impostoring other commenters. But now his comments are scrubbed.
All that troll work for nothing — while our comments remain.
Sweet! ☺
Honestly, this is a pretty bizarre post. Just about everyone I know thinks of climate skeptics as the crazy old uncle that you politely ignore. Ya’ll might not like it, but it hardly is demonizing. However, there is some real demonizing of mainstream scientists (of which I count myself one) in the post above and even more in the comments below.
And once again I must sadly comment that there are too many unpleasant references to WW2 atrocities. It would be nice if people could just… not do that for a change.
Cheers
Ben
benbenben sez:
Just about everyone I know thinks of climate skeptics as the crazy old uncle that you politely ignore.
All that indicates is the bubble of benben’s existence. Everyone he knows thinks alike. Big surprise.
But the real world is here. This site gets readers from all sides of the debate. Benben just can’t believe that there are well educated, intelligent folks who don’t believe the things that he believes.
But in fact, the majority of those educated in the hard sciences are the true ‘consensus’, while benben and his pals exist in their own private bubble.
And that bubble is getting smaller. Skepticism is on the rise and has been for some time. Trolls are known to come in as multiple personalities to look as though there is more of them, and of course there’s the line they trot out about skeptics being “like a crazy old uncle” and too few to worry about. The more they insist we are few and on shaky ground, the more worried they are that the opposite is true. It’s now desperation talking, standing by their lies is all they have left, and they are rapidly losing public support.
I’m a PhD experimental chemist, benben. If you invite me out, I’ll give a seminar to you and everyone you know showing that climate models have no predictive value. They are incapable of AGW attribution or detection. All my own work.
If you like, I’ll follow that up with a second seminar showing that the global air temperature record is not known to better than ±0.5 C. Again my own analysis.
After that, the audience can vote on the identity of the crazy uncle with bizarre beliefs.
Right on Pat. And I’m a Ph.D. geologist working in mineral exploration for the last several decades in Canada, a country that was the epicentre of the last glaciation (and presumably previous glaciations but we don’t know much about them because each one eliminates most of the evidence of the ones before). Having something of an inquiring mind, and surrounded by evidence of glacial activity (and more importantly, needing to use the knowledge of glacial activity to help locate mineral deposits), I came to learn something about past climates. And I came to the conclusion, quite honestly and without exterior prodding, that there’s nothing at all unusual about the minor amount of recent warming. Nothing at all. Faster and more extreme changes have happened in the past. Again and again.
And, just as those past climate changes took place without the benefit of anthropogenic CO2, my mutation from someone without much of an opinion into a climate sceptic, took place without any help from the deep pockets of oil companies, coal miners etc. Believe me, if I had known that they would actually PAY ME to voice an opinion, I’d have sent them all invoices. And I don’t have a right wing political bias either. If you cut me, you’ll find I’m more than a bit red on the inside.
Since hanging out at WUWT, I’ve learned quite a bit from scientists in other, more rigorous disciplines like physics, meteorology, astronomy and oceanography. Everything I’ve learned has helped me to the following conclusions:
1. Earth’s climate is very complicated and is influenced by many different natural phenomena; we understand some of it, but there’s a lot to be learned, and it is outrageously arrogant to assume that we know enough to be able to influence future climate in any way.
2. Human activity of cutting down forests and burning fossil fuels has emitted a great deal of CO2 and the well documented trend of rising atmospheric CO2 very probably has a significant anthropogenic component (in addition to degassing of ocean water).
3. It is possible that increasing atmospheric CO2 caused a part of warming climate during the late 20th century, but the physics of infra-red emission and absorption in a complex atmospheric system is not well understood and is unlikely to be capable of valid simulation based on observations in a 2-component system. BUT
4. Atmospheric CO2 content, when tracked through the big 100,000-year cycles of the past, has varied in sympathy with temperature but lagged behind it. This means that CO2 CAN NOT BE the primary driver of very big climate changes. It might have a secondary effect, I’ll grant that, but the lag means that CO2 content of the air is responding to temperature changes (the solubility of a gas in water decreases with increased temperature and not vice versa. That’s something we all earned in high school chemistry, but I suppose not everyone took it in.
5. During the Medieval Warm Period the climate was significantly warmer than it is today, by about 1°C, and during the height of the Roman Empire, it was probably warmer than during the MWP by another 1°C. I have yet to hear an explanation from anybody, anywhere, telling me WHY THIS WAS A BAD THING.
Specifically,addressing this to benben, it’s any easy question that doesn’t require command of any particular scientific discipline. The question is this: It was warmer in the past than it is now. Why was this a bad thing? Why? Why was it a bad thing that Nordic peoples had farms in Greenland? Why was it a bad thing that the Romans had vineyards in Yorkshire? Why? Why? Why?
6. There is no possibility of any valid objection to this statement; it is a fact. We live in an Ice Age. In fact, the reason the “we” are “we” is BECAUSE we live in an Ice Age, when the stresses imposed by rapid changes in climate and habitat during previous glacial periods, forced rapid evolution of apes into creatures with enough brain power to manipulate their local physical environment and survive deadly cold. We are 13,000 years into an interglacial, and the longest previous interglacial lasted for 16,000 years. Hmmm. I wonder what I should conclude from that? Let me think……… I wonder if moving to Canada was such a good idea after all?
I’d like to feel able to use my real name, but there is government funding involved in some of what I do for a living, and the fact is, that even in these supposedly enlightened times, people are being persecuted for their opinions. Or dismissed as social deviants in need of re-education. Perhaps I should say “especially in these supposedly enlightened times”.
Great exposition on the geological evidence, Smart Rock. Your take on radiation physics and climate seems entirely rational to me. When looking at the evidences it all just comes down to Stefan-Boltzmann, as though that equation constituted a valid theory of climate.
Like you, probably, I started out an AGW believer, but got tired of the polemics and decided to read the literature for myself. When I read of the huge W/m^2 flux errors of climate models, it became immediately clear they could not possibly predict anything about climate and CO2 emissions.
Since then I came to see how that understanding escapes climate modelers, because they know nothing of the impact of physical error on model predictions. But physicists are supposed to be expert. There’s no excuse for the simplistic accord offered by the physics establishment.
Hi Pat! In this post I don’t want to discuss AGW itself. What I was commenting on is that it is strange to complain about demonetization, and then have the entire thread fill with some pretty vile commentary about the very people you complain are demonizing you.
Calling me a troll just because I don’t share your opinion is not very conducive to a constructive debate. Linking to zyklon-B, as someone has done above, is really really unpleasant and will drive of anyone that was remotely interested in constructive and civil debate.
Again, this thread is not about AGW itself, but about the way it is being discussed. Just imagine an average soccer mom stumbling on this site and reading all those pretty nasty comments, do you honestly think she would think ‘oh these are some reasonable people, let’s trust what they have to say’?
Pat, I’m obviously not talking about you here (you are perfectly fine to talk with) but about the tone of others (always a pleasure DB!), and honestly, also the tone of the author of this post: writing that the opponents in your debate want “death squads, gulags, and neighbor-spying-on-neighbor” is really extreme and nasty imagery and is not going to lead to constructive debate.
benbenben says:
this thread is not about AGW itself, but about the way it is being discussed.
This article and thread is specifically about the demonization of skeptics, so quit deflecting. Your hurt feelings are nothing by comparison.
Regarding AGW, you have never been willing to have a reasonable discussion. A reasonable discussion would include the scientific method, along with all available evidence, data, and measurements of AGW. But you don’t discuss those things in good faith. You never have.
Any discussion of AGW requires that you quantify AGW. But you can’t. It’s just too small to measure. “AGW” is still just a conjecture (which I think exists, but it’s just too minuscule to measure).
But since you have an unshakeable belief in the ‘carbon’ scare, you keep coming back with your evidence-free arguments, which essentially consist of your belief system. That’s no more scientific than Scientology.
If you were willing to have a rational, evidence-based discussion, that would be great. But you know you would promptly lose that debate, since you cannot produce a single measurement of the thing you’re trying to convince is gonna get us.
Instead, you always fall back on your irrelevant ‘poor me, they’re not being nice’ deflection. If you were a stand-up guy, you would admit that there is no credible evidence that either global warming, or the rise in (harmless, beneficial) CO2 has caused any global problems. In fact, all the empirical evidence available indicates that both CO2 and global warming are entirely beneficial.
If/when you start arguing in good faith, you will start getting some respect. You can start by keeping your arguments within the scientific method; logical, rational, and above all, data / evidence / measurement-based. Now would be a good time to start.
benben, context is critical. You’re treating Greg Garrard’s symposium as an isolated incident. It’s not. Its context is that we AGW-skeptics have been accused of systematic lying, of criminally callous venality, of violent political partisanship, of crimes against humanity, of deserving of Nuremberg-type trials, of jail, and even of execution.
These accusations are widespread in blog sites, in newspapers, have entered Congress, and are now being pressed by Attorneys General. The passions have become very dangerous, and the cross-hairs are on us.
In that fore-going context Greg Garrard calls for a symposium to discover our thinking, soliciting the very people who have made those untrue and unjust accusations.
It seems to me that considerable anger about his effrontery is entirely justifiable.
It also seems to me benben, in all cordial regard, that you need to pay attention to the extraordinary polemical excesses of the AGW side in the larger arena. And perhaps dissociate yourself from them.
And finishing up in our local arena, I add that there is zero, repeat zero, scientific case for AGW. And I can demonstrate that.
Best wishes. . .
+/- 0.5C? You are way to generous. +/- 5.0C is probably closer to the mark.
The guy who compares climate skeptics to his crazy uncle and declares that they should just be ignored, is now complaining about demonization.
Irony is a lost art.
Hey Pat,
“It also seems to me benben, in all cordial regard, that you need to pay attention to the extraordinary polemical excesses of the AGW side in the larger arena. And perhaps dissociate yourself from them.”
Sure, I totally dissociate myself from nasty comments made from the AGW side. Its just not something I have personally ever seen (I’m in Europe, and looking at the republican primaries this year I think we are generally a bit more laid back when it comes to debating).
Pat we had a discussion before. I read your work on uncertainty and I’m still curious about your opinion on the minimum accuracy a model should have before you can take action on it (which obviously does not have to be 100%).
That being said I am sure you agree that it’s… very ironic to express your anger by using very extreme and unpleasant imagery, as happening above and below in the comments.
benben, the annual change in GHG forcing is about 0.035 W/m^2.
If one wants to predict the influence of that upon the climate, one needs a physical model that can simulate the climate energy state to an annual accuracy better than ±0.035 W/m^2. That’s the standard of physical science, and it’s roundly and thoroughly ignored in climatology.
I have yet to encounter anyone in consensus climate science who has any concept of that standard, or who agrees to it once informed.
Glad to see you do not subscribe to the character assassination so universal and so vociferous on the AGW side. Maybe a better tack to take for you here is to note that you understand the anger people show here, as the AGW people behave with such villany, but it still pains you to have to experience counter blasts on this site.
oh I don’t mind people being nasty to me. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here. Why should I change tack and pander to people that write stuff like this:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/04/21/does-demonizing-the-other-side-promote-constructive-debate-over-climate-change/comment-page-1/#comment-2196551
We have no idea who wrote that, benben.
benben,
Does the world inside your head have other people in it, or just you? I read back and there is not even ONE comment directed at “mainstream scientists” in the opening post, or this thread as of my writing, let alone any demonizing ones!!! Many directed at environmentalists, warmists, and the man stupid enough to request papers from people who assume that they KNOW who other people think they are…yes. For obvious reasons. But somehow you managed to make yourself a victim of a non-existent “demonizing of mainstream scientists”…and you find the post BIZARRE? I literally just smacked my own forehead.
Your “pretended offended” syndrome then extends to “sadness”, “unpleasantness”, and what would be “nice” for people to do, immediately after you insult a group of people you call “climate skeptics” (I’ve never met someone who was skeptical of the climate)??? Does the wind of Obliviousness whipping over your head ever frustrate you?
Trust me, if you are ever in the company of real, honest, fact based scientists, YOU are the crazy old person they politely ignore. Which is probably why you don’t actually know any.
well, as an environmental scientist I would consider myself both a scientist and an environmentalist. Yes yes. I’ve never met a real honest fact based scientist, because obviously all real scientists are on your side. Haha. Confirmation bias at work my friend 😉
Benben, stop trying to make disparate sides of the debate equivalent. Only one side is actually demanding the other side conform, pay money, and change, and also attempting to ostracize and marginalize them. Your arrogance in calling the thirty thousand plus scientist who signed the Oregon petition “someone’s crazy Uncle” is anything but scientific. Only one side is doing the following…
Did you not read about the recent RICO collusion by politicians?
Did you not read about the president calling thousands of PHD scientists deniers?
Did you miss the 350.org video?
Have you missed entire books on the subject? (I recommend “Blue Planet in Green Shackle’s”)
Did you miss the quotes from numerous U.N. leading “environmentalists” directly stating the real goal is global government?
What planet have you been living on?
I expect neither you or Nick Stokes to respond to these question rationally.
benben
Models are only as good as the degree to which they are tested. To date, global climate models appear to fail rather miserably if you actually look at the evidence. See https://climateaudit.org/2016/04/19/gavin-schmidt-and-reference-period-trickery/>Gavin Schmidt and Reference Period Trickery. See John Christy’s 2 Feb 2016 testimony.
Have you considered the scientific method as described by Nobel Laurerate Richard Feynman? Have you studied Feynman’s 1974 Caltech commencement address?
Is “mainstream science” still scientific?
Hey benben,
How about a substantive reply to some or all of Smart Rock’s above enumerated points?
Your continual drivel of vapid and vacuous comments does not bespeak a scientific mind.
I don’t really understand people on this blog are so keen to keep repeating the same old argument over and over. Lets just wait a couple of years and see how the temperature record develops.
What is a topic related to THIS blog post is the tone of the debate. The point being that besides Pat Frank there are very little people here somehow capable of expressing themselves without being incredibly unpleasant. “Drivel of vapid and vacuous comments”? Why don’t you, WBWilson, explain to me why you think it is necessary to use that language, just because we don’t agree with each other on something.
Benben,
First, temperatures can increase or decrease in the future without proving that CO2 is the cause either way. Correlation is not causation. Period.
Second, you ask WBWilson why he’s being unpleasant when you can answer your own question…why did you choose to refer to skeptics in a derogatory manner yourself? Did your approach foster “constructive” responses? Did you expect it to?
I’d agree with waiting a few years.
Unfortunately your fellow travelers aren’t. They are spending my money on their hairbrained schemes now, and they are demanding even more of my money and my freedom.NOW.
benben … “MAINSTREAM SCIENTIST”
bwhaa bwhaa bwhaa cough cough cough
BZ Don
I am benben’s crazy uncle. I was trying to think of a ‘polite’ way to explain that he is a nice lad and might be a good engineer when he learns a questioning attitude.
I have to be careful. If I laugh or cough too hard it activates my vega nerve and pass out. Congrats, you got me.
Kit
I don’t know what they did to us is school. Early on (engineering orientation or physics) a professor told the class that the engineering curriculum was literally going to change the way we think. I immediately said to myself “that’s BS, I like the way I think… I’m not gonna change”. I think they got me anyway (or maybe I was already wired correctly).
Some people play the game of guessing where others are from (Country, region, etc.) by their accents or how they talk … it seems that would be hard to do. To me is seems easier to tell, from written comments, who is an engineer and what type; applications, mechanical, civil/consulting (& even wash outs/transfers due to inability), etc.
benben never made it through any engineering program of note. Appears he tried for less than a year (mechanical), transferred to archaeology (or something similar and easier), and is working to get a masters in fluff. It would be fun to look through his masters thesis (to date).
why donM, I finished a bachelors degree in chemical engineering with pretty high grades. And then I did a PhD at a technical university in the material sciences department. I went for many a beer with the guys developing materials for fusion reactors and optimizing steel microstructures. I know my engineering 😉
its just an observational hypothesis, it could very easily be proved to be wrong…
… but claimed drinking with research types does not do it.
A BS and then straight to a PhD, with a little bit of drinking in between…. Impressive.
benben, you give no indication in your posts of thinking consistent with a degree in engineering. Engineers take error and uncertainty seriously. You appear to ignore it.
Here is an example of you doing that: “Lets just wait a couple of years and see how the temperature record develops.” Aphan has already and correctly called you on that statement.
Any engineer would know that “how the temperature develops” provides no interpretative meaning when the only physical theory has such huge errors and uncertainties. That obvious qualification on any conclusion has apparently escaped you.
How is it possible to complete a degree in Chemical Engineering with no apparent understanding of, or recognition of, physical error and its impact on reliability?
I know. He’s the kind of man who claims he takes money for thinking, while admitting he spent his college years infesting bars, and now believes the laws of chemistry aren’t able to calculate the temperature of air.
At the same time, he says he thinks Phil Jones’ admission to scientist John Christy in a 2005 email that “The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world cooled since 1998. Ok it has but it’s only seven years of data and it isn’t statistically significant.”
BenBen thinks that’s science.
When Phil Jones was suspended in 2009 because of Climategate and his being seen saying that, Met Office his employer told him confess or be thrown to the wolves and possible jail. In Phil Jones’ disastrous, now legendary Feb 2010 BBC don’t-go-to-jail interview, his confession that he had been faking: fraudulently manufacturing every tenth warming since 1998, on every global database he added to – for the second time – Bennie thinks that’s simply a wonderful man to be associated with his intellectual leader.
When James Hansen told him for thirty years, that the law of chemistry for calculation of atmospheric temperatures doesn’t work, and if you want to calculate the temperature anywhere, you need “special magic” that “our laws of thermodynamics can’t deal with.”
Of course they can: there’s a couple of posts here where Steve Goddard did just that. After Harry Huffman did it in his “No Greenhouse On Venus” post, on his own blog.
Steve’s posts here on demolishing that lie about gas chemistry are named “hyperventilating on Venus/Venus Envy” and Eurobennie could stand to learn how to do that: actually calculate the temperature of some gas, using the actual law of chemistry for calculating the temperature of some atmospheric gas.
Then there’s Mike Mann’s suing Mr Steyn for telling everybody he’s a liar and ‘molester of mathematics’ lying in the filing that he won a Nobel, so Mr Steyn was ‘calling a Nobel Laureate a liar.
That’s who benben is here to represent, and these are simply those mens’ contributions to scientific reality.
Jones admitting he faked data for decades, Mann right there with him, actually teaching Jones how, and Hansen with his bizarre predictions about getting out of his office in a rowboat, whereas the people who have CAUGHT those men – they aren’t known as the people who knocked the bottom out of natural sciences.
Also, the people who are critical of those government employees and their ilk, aren’t the ones who pasted their own photos onto the portraits of NAZI leadership. That’s the Cook guy who did that at SkepticalSighnts.
He and his friends pasted their OWN portraits over the faces of Nazi criminals, other people didn’t do that.
They did that to themselves. Laughing about it.
Eurobennie believes the men above are scientists. They’re frauds. Admitted, Caught, Busted, frauds.
They’re admitted, and busted, and caught, in the act, repeatedly. This website was actually founded on the discovery of a lot of their shenanigans: aka illegal activity. Faking physical instrumental readings, in order to steer policy and markets.
That might be mainstream for Eurobennie, but then for about ten years, mainstream in Europe, was the people Eurobennies heroes pasted their own faces over the photographs and portraits of, in WWII.
If bennie is a real chemist he can clear all that up now and tell everyone what the name of the law of chemistry is, written for calculating temperature of gas and atmospheric mixes in chemistry.
You don’t get out enough. Warmists have been off the charts for years with their demeaning comments against those who disagree with their beliefs.
Just goes to show you how small the circle of benben’s friends really is.
Like most warmists he wouldn’t dare to actually go out and meet actual skeptics.
Might risk learning something, and that just wouldn’t do.
Man I would love to meet some real skeptics. Its just that in Europe you hardly find any! That’s why I’m here 🙂
The only problem here is that there is so much vitriol going around, it’s no wonder you never get any visits from ‘the other side’. And honestly, it doesn’t seem like you are all that interested in talking. Oh well
…says the wild eyed alarmist who claims everyone see skeptics as your crazy Uncle and intimates that there are no skeptics except in the US.
Both of these Bebben comments are nothing more then a pathetic attempt to marginalize the thousands of scientists in Europe who are skeptical of CAGW.
You really need to get out more benben, “Environmental scientists”? This means you take the wrong IPCC model mean, which runs way to warm, and then project further harms based on warming not happening and harms not manifesting, Scientist? I think not.
And of course I cannot resist pointing your attention to one of your own, putting together holocaust denial and AGW denial in a most disturbing fashion.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/04/21/does-demonizing-the-other-side-promote-constructive-debate-over-climate-change/comment-page-1/#comment-2196551
benben … that’s the 2nd time (so far) that you’ve linked to that holocaust denial comment. Did you not notice that he/she was then thoroughly schooled in history in the next few comments???
Why would you repeatedly point to THAT comment … if you weren’t trying to paint everyone here at WUWT with that same brush … totally ignoring that the commenter was taken to the woodshed?
benben,
I sympathize to some degree with your sentiments – at least the surface content. However, (i) Are you really willing to go to bat for a “Professor of Sustainability”? I.e. do you really take someone like that at face value?, (ii) As someone already said, there’s a context to this, which includes a recent Busby Berkeley number by a dozen state attorney generals (along with the one-and-only). Given that, the bland tone of your comment (a variation of “nothing to see here”) begins to sound a little disingenuous.
benben, [Wait a minute! What if the pseudonym “benben” is actually what his crazy old uncle called Benjamin, Jr. Even wilder, what if the crazy old uncle used that as a term of affection for Benita? benben’s phrasing, word usage and writing cadence is rather androgynous. I’ve seen stranger things around here.] Cr-p. Now I forgot what I really wanted to say about the Asst. Prof. efforts to denigrate real scientists.
Dave Fair (As always, up front and personal.)
It’s your own people who were caught pasting their own faces onto WWII criminals’ portraits and photographs.
It’s your own people who were screaming at grandmas in mini-vans as they tried to get to work at the railroad, that by distributing heating supplies they were working on ”death trains to Auschwitz.”
And incidentally you told me you’re a chemist and I think you’re a liar about that.
(1)What’s the name of the law of chemistry for calculating the temperature of gas?
(2)What is the formula for that law? What creates each factor making up that equation?
(3)Which one of those is the green house effect?
See – I’ve been an applied chemist for over forty years. My formal education centers around atmospheric radiation. Radiation communications electronic engineering is what my degree is in and I say,
you don’t know how to calculate the temperature of air, and I can prove it.
Because you can’t answer those questions for me.
For a real working scientist, checking the bullsh*t story of some internet wannabe,
takes about one sentence. IF you can’t give the right answer to the very first one, you’re not going to be anything but another barking nobody, who real scientists, have so little problem debunking,
that outing us and banning us from where believers congregate is THE method for message control.
We real scientists who have made our living in atmospheric chemistry decades upon decades, encourage people – go listen to what a GHGE believer claims.
That’s our proof you’re incompetent. Your own words.
Now: if you’re a chemist tell us all the name of the law for calculating the temperature of air.
Tell us what it’s equation is,
Point to the green house effect.
Or you’re a fake.
If you’re a scientist then tell everyone here what the name of the law is for calculating temperature in atmospheric chemistry.
End of your bullshoot, in one swift sentence.
“Does Demonizing the Other Side Promote Constructive Debate Over Climate Change?”
Of course the answer is “No”.
Does the question imply that those doing the demonization actually want constructive debate?
I don’t think they do.
Here’s the thing; the time for civilized, rational debate was 8 or more years ago. Right around the time they were loudly proclaiming that “the debate is over”, even though there hadn’t really been any. And, what few debates they did actually do, they lost handily. The reason they lost was that most of their arguments were more emotionalism than anything else. They had and still have little in the way of facts on their side. It is laughable for them to think, or pretend to think that they have facts, logic, or reality on their side.
So, who do we think we are? We are on the side of facts, logic, reality and true science. They aren’t.
Bruce Cobb,
Yes, there used to be debates. But the alarmist side lost every debate, so now they tuck tail and run, refusing to debate skeptics.
Their more recent tactic is to unleash the peanut gallery here, to try and run interference for them.
But that’s not working, either. The peanut gallery can’t produce any convincing evidence to support their climate alarmism. All they can do is hand-wave.
Bruce says:
We are on the side of facts, logic, reality and true science. They aren’t.
Exactamundo. When you step back and look at the big picture, every scary alarmist claim has turned out to be exactly 180º the opposite of what the Real World is telling us:
As it turns out, the rise in CO2 has been entirely beneficial, with no observed downside; more CO2 is better, not worse. Arctic ice cover has dipped — naturally — but global ice is still at its long term average because Antarctic ice is growing. Polar bears are proliferating. Sea levels are rising less than they have over past centuries; they are certainly not accelerating as endlessly predicted.
The alarmist crowd has been wrong about everything. The biosphere has been enjoying the flattest global temperatures in the entire geologic record. But they want the public to believe that a 0.7ºC wiggle will lead to climate catastrophe.
So instead of manning up and admitting they were wrong, the alarmist clique demonizes skeptics — the only honest kind of scientists. They have no idea how despicable that is to the rest of us.
And now they’ve resorted to lying outright. Up until last year, everyone agreed that global warming had stopped (the ‘pause’) for almost 20 years. But this year the new talking point became: “global warming never stopped!” That’s a lie, of course. But what else have they got?
Their choice was to admit the hated skeptics were right all along — or to simply lie about what’s happening. What did they decide?
Rather than admit the truth, they decided to sell their souls.
A friend if mine has a degree in mechanical engineering and worked for many years with reputable car companies. However, he is firmly on the other side in this discussion of climate, and refuses to debate me on the subject. The last straw (for me) was when he quoted Sceptical Science as a reliable source of information. Since then I realize that there is no way to convince him with facts.
Ian M
Ian McQueen, ask your engineering friend whether it’s important to him that climate models have never gone through an engineering-quality validation and verification.
If he says it’s important, ask him why he thinks their predictions are reliable when the models have never been validated.
If it’s not important to him, point out that his acceptance of AGW is unprofessional.
A minor side note. Even if the arctic ice were to completely disappear, that would not be over all, a bad thing.
Any impact on the environment would be minor, the biggest being more rain in Canada and Siberia.
The opening of the northwest passage would be a huge boon to shipping companies.
+ 97
A lot of the people on the bad side of WW2 lived in a bubble (that they wholeheartedly embraced) as well.
There is a surreal “debate” going on here down under- the natural home of bizarre animals and it seems even more bizarre argument.
Larry Marshall CEO of the leading Scientific Research body the CSIRO has said as the “science is settled” there is no longer any need for his organization to continue to do research into climate change, but it will instead focus research on climate adaptation and mitigation activities.
Predictably the local warmists have criticized him heavily for ceasing research into climate change.
However the same activists have now also criticized Senator George Brandis the Attorney General in the conservative coalition government, who has recently said as far as he understands it the “Science on climate is not settled ” (thus contradicting Marshall)
So apparently it seems the orthodox line is that the “science is settled” but you are not allowed to use that as a basis for action.
Go figure
Hey benben, sorry I compared your bubble to the bubble of people that you don’t agree with. Benefit of the doubt … you probably would not have been sucked into their bubble had you been around 80 years ago either.
I wasted my time re-reading the comments again … I didn’t see any references (unpleasant or otherwise) to WW2 stuff in any of the above comments.
I’m pretty sure that the harassment of the witches (and the witch-like) occurred long before WW2 … was that the referenced atrocity that confused you?
Apology accepted of course 😉
Someone linked to the wikipedia page of zyklon B. And the lead author writing about”death squads, gulags, and neighbor-spying-on-neighbor” is also quite unseemly, wouldn’t you agree?
benben April 21, 2016 at 9:47 pm
“death squads, gulags, and neighbor-spying-on-neighbor”
Yes, I would say they’re very unseemly. They are also three of the things prophesied to be perpetrated against Christians in the “last days.” Therefore it is not unreasonable to say they are aspects of the future New World Order, moreso than of WW2.
benben says:
Apology accepted of course…
Could you be any more insufferable?
‘That is pretty messed up, and definitely not leading to constructive or civil debate, agreed?’
benben, you’re getting your head handed to you in this thread. If it weren’t for your emotional, unscientific, and immature arguments, you wouln’t have anything to say.
haha DB, come on, even you should agree that linking to zyklon-b (or zuklon-b as the commenter misspelt it) is just not a very civil thing to do, especially under a thread bemoaning the lack of civility in debate. Amazing!
Also, please note the 😉 above
Not as unseemly as leading warmists demanding prison time for those who disagree with them.
Leftists always start with imprisoning those who disagree with them, then they move on to more permanent solutions.
oh and lets not forget the elegant comments of one dogdaddyblog below, who writes of someone he does not agree with: “He seems enthusiastic about the ideas of bestiality and zoophilia.”
That is pretty messed up, and definitely not leading to constructive or civil debate, agreed?
Is it true? If so, yes … pretty messed up.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/04/21/does-demonizing-the-other-side-promote-constructive-debate-over-climate-change/comment-page-1/#comment-2196153
benben, a few points: I did not say I disagreed with the Professor. I read his References, as linked above. I accurately reported his stated background and the substance of the courses he is currently teaching. I accurately reported the fact he is “co-writing” a book about whatever “literary” gems result from the symposium.
Most pertinently, his stated interest in (books?) about bestiality and zoophilia is prominent. The very definition of “stating one’s enthusiasms.” Is, after reading someone’s own assertions, making a bald statement about the facts presented somehow “hurtful?”
benben, there are no “trigger-warnings” and “safe-places” in the real world to protect you in your vulnerabilities. The world outside academe, in your words, is “pretty messed up.” I am not a nice person. I ethically fight to win those battles I choose to engage. Sticking strictly to facts, not speculation and conjecture, I use whatever communications skills I possess to get where I want to be.
Oh, by the way benben. I use my real name in public communications.
Dave Fair
The good [sic] Professor’s professorship is well-named for his “specialization”. The sustainability of which he professes is perhaps the sustainability of an ill-gotten revenue stream.
People, Prof. Garrard is a professional book critic and teaches courses on reading books to young college students. That’s all. He is trying to leverage writing a book about books (writings, papers, etc.) from skeptics with someone who has some chops in the climate community so he can sell said book. Beneath notice.
Dave Fair
Also, please note that he is not promoting a review of the science of climate change. He is promoting a literary review of the style of writing “anti-environment” as it relates to social (red neck?), national and ethnic factors. A time honored method of looking down your intellectual nose at the people who are in the trenches, as it were, by criticising their writings.
…sort of like marginalizing those who disagree with you by claiming everyone knows they are just your crazy Uncle. (Right Benben)
Right David A 😉
Crazy uncle sound pretty decent compared to accusing someone of being ‘enthusiastic about the ideas of bestiality and zoophilia.’, as the ever so eloquent dogdaddyblog has done below. This is my point exactly. You can’t really get angry about the things the other side is saying when your side is saying much worse things. Get your own house in order I would say.
Cheers!
The more I bounce around this thread, the more risible material I find. Personal time-wise, I regret ever pointing out the Professor’s stated enthusiasms. Uncovering parts of benben’s thought processes is, however, a real gem.
IM(not so)HO his cute opening in response to David A is an attempt to ingratiate himself as “one of the boys.” He then goes on to essentially say “your side (but not you!) is much more horrible than mine in doing exactly the same things; but we adults are much smarter.” Puerile.
BTW, benben, I didn’t “accuse” anybody of anything. See my above remarks. In the distant past I’d read some stuff about bestality and zoophilia but they weren’t very interesting; I dropped it. If I were enthusiastic, I may have done some study of the literary merits thereof. Look up the subjects; you might enjoy them, who knows? To me your writings indicate a relatively inexperienced person, so go for it!
David A,
I believe I actually felt and heard a sonic “boom” as your subtle comment to benben zipped over the top of his head! 🙂
It shows how smart you are.
Referring to looking down one’s intellectual nose.
He seems enthusiastic about the ideas of bestiality and zoophilia.
benben, he is teaching the course ENGL 345M “Bestial Passions: We live in a zoophilic culture … yet we abhor bestiality…” It covers short DH Lawrence novels, exploring “… this curious nexus of love, desire, disgust and taboo.”
Sounds exciting! benben, maybe you can audit it through tele-education. Maybe then you would learn the basis of his seeming (to me) enthusiasm. It is a reflection of the selective outrage of academe that no trigger warning is given.
Blast it! My wife loves dogs and horses and needs to be protected against the trauma of learning about the nasty things humans can do to them. s/
Your “ever so eloquent dogdaddyblog,”
Dave Fair
I recommend that Alex Epstein and Patrick Moore attend the sessions. If they went, it would probably be worth the price of admission.
. One knows not whether to laugh or cry at Garrard saying “this symposium seeks to understand ‘the enemy’, challenging reductive stereotypes and homogenizing assumptions in the interests of constructive democratic debate”
____________________
Doing an APB, an ‘offender description’ of climate sceptics.
The dogma gets sentences and paragraphs, a green contra-bible.
“..there is nothing wrong per se with a global administrative body, perhaps under the purview of the United Nations”
So you don’t see them as a den of Neo Marxbrothers that want to control the world. You don’t see that when the iron curtain came down, two things happened, one we appear to know and one we don’t: 1) freedom flowed in and 2) Apparatchiks, with no other skills but those they had practiced for a lifetime, quietly walked out and continued their nefarious work, insinuating themselves into NGOs, particularly the UN and environmental activist bodies, and the world’s universities, agencies and institutes. I never thought I’d hear American elites, academics, billionaire foundations, and the newly minted throngs of designer-brained useful idiots produced with lefty “core” education calling for an end to capitalism. Such a nightmare scenario was so unthinkable that it would never even have gotten published in a novel from two generations ago. Or maybe it did in Atlas Shrugged.
Bernie Sanders is like the Pied Piper of Hamlin with all these young people scarfing down his manifesto like a slurpy. The deck is evermore stacked against conservative politics as they keep moving left to hang on to relevance in this sliding world. Don’t be afraid of Donald Trump! I believe he is the only one who fears not to go to any length to reverse the slide for America. I’m afraid “experience” in governing is the worst indictment I can think of for the job at hand. Most other parts of the world, except Eastern Europe, Putin’s Russia and China can’t be saved. Maybe UK if they screw up the courage to exit the Europlague, but the politics of fear has worked its magic on a once magnificent people I’m afraid..
It’s been estimated that if Sanders is elected and enacts his entire agenda, US govt spending will increase by 50%.
It’s easy to get people to vote for you, when you promise to give them lots of free stuff.
Socialists have been doing that for generations.
and per country, first generation only, then by force.
For the original, non-PC version “one man, one vote, once!” which is the possible result of Bernie Sanders being president.
It should be pointed out that “demonizing” and “satirizing” are too completely different things
Eugene WR Gallun
Since at least the time of Socrates, satire has been used by the relatively powerless against the power of politics, economics, and academic sciences. Sound familiar? Also, love Josh.
Dave Fair
Dr Garrard leaves his email address, so I sent him this polite mail:
Dear Dr Garrard,
A good idea, if you genuinely want to know who climate sceptics think they are, would be to ask them. Maybe their responses would be lies or self-delusional, but don’t you think it would at least be a good place to start? Instead, you throw the question into the echo-chamber of people who already ‘know’ who sceptics are – religious nuts or nasty right-wing shills for oil companies.
I am sceptical that climate change is mainly driven by CO2, and I am none of the insulting things you list. I am a centre-left, educated person who cares about the environment – and about the good practice of science. My scepticism arises from the fact that proponents of this hypothesis are incapable of producing evidence that the small amount of warming seen in the late 20th century was mainly the result of the increase in atmospheric CO2. When such evidence is produced, I will take it seriously. But it won’t be; this is politics, not science.
Incidentally, the sort of hysterical demonising of ‘deniers’ such as this ‘call for papers’ is what first alerted me to the fact that the Global Warming hypothesis was probably a scam. Looking for the evidence has convinced me that it is.
I am under no illusions that you will take any of this into account in your thinking, which was decided long ago and is based on your tribal allegencies. If you have actually managed to read this far I would be quite surprised. I would be even more surprised if you were to deign to reply, because that might mean having to think about some cherished assumptions.
Sincerely,
Let us know if you ever hear back from him.
I’m not holding my breath.
Propero — From beginning to end everything you wrote in your e-mail is correct. Thank you. — Eugene WR Gallun
“(C)limate skeptics are … oil company shills, religious fundamentalists and neoliberal cheerleaders”
That describes about 3 percent of us. 97% of climate skeptics are merely intelligent human beings.
“there is nothing wrong per se with a global administrative body, perhaps under the purview of the United Nations,”
There is worlds wrong and nothing right with a one-world government, considering human nature, the fact that the government would have to be socialist and totalitarian by definition, and the fact that this is clearly the UN’s goal, based on Agenda 21 and their 2030 Agenda. There is no way a world can be run as a democracy, and the UN plans something similar to the EU which is run by a group of unelected officials, who basically do what they want, which is dictatorial.
The most charitable explanation I can think of about the climate warmistas, is that they are like the blind men feeling an elephant and believing they know what it is from what they each feel. Each of them may even be somewhat accurately comprehending their part but they have no true conception of the overall animal.
Another explanation is that the climate alarmists who push the Man-caused angle are a strange mixture of out-and-out scammers, sincere scientists who wittingly or unwittingly are convinced by their own confirmation biases in the narrow field they specialize in that the whole package is true, politicians who hunger for more control, and those who have agendas usually socialistic in nature that align with the proposed “solutions” to stop “harmful” climate change.
All of them are willing to accept less evidence than what should be scientifically required to prove Man’s causation of whatever climate change is actually occurring.
The Holocaust jab at the end was unnecessary. There’s even less cold, hard evidence of the conventional Holocaust narrative than there is for AGW, but I urge any burgeoning skeptics to stay away from looking into it. You can’t ever unsee the truth and you can’t talk about it in society… ever…
That one is a loooooong, deep rabbit hole for those who dare to venture in.
…WTF ???
I don’t have a dog in this fight, but I will say my uncle, as an Lt. in the US Army, entered one of those camps for which you think there is “less cold, hard evidence”. Just sayin’.
Millions dead is “little evidence”
Eye witness testimony from camp survivors as well as guards and the soldiers who liberated the camps is “little evidence”
The evidence for the Holocaust is overwhelming and only those who prefer to support evil try to deny it.
Not to mention hundreds of military video’s of those piles of dead women and children stacked like cord-wood !!
Ian Forrest — From beginning to end everything you wrote in your e-mail is correct. Thank you — Eugene WR Gallun
How could anyone ever say that the Holocaust never took place? Hitler got rid of anyone even just suspected of getting in his way!
And it sure cost a lot of lives to put an end to what Hitler and his henchmen were doing!
‘Let us know if you ever hear back from him.’
climateotter
Yes, I did hear back from him (Greg Garrard) and his email was polite and unaggressive. It seems he really does want to know how sceptics think and is against the sort of demonisation we see so often. He said he accepted the climatologists on the science because he was unqualified to do otherwise – and I wrote back to him with a brief summary of why that was not a good idea. I also pointed him in the direction of wattsupwiththat.
Dr Garrard is not some non-thinking climate activist and hopefully he will investigate and come to a conclusion based on the evidence (or rather, lack of evidence).
Thanks, good to hear!
Sometime after reading this post, it occurred to me that Professor of Sustainability sounds a little like The Admiral of the Queen’s Navy. However, sustainability is a tough word to wrap rhymes around. (Eugene Gallun, where are you?) Anyway, I gave it a try:
I am a professor at the UBC.
My
racketcalling is sustainability.I put my lectures on the MTV.
On the side I have my own consultancy.
       chorus:
       He puts his lectures on the MTV.
       He even has his own consultancy.
I wear tweed jackets and I drink green tea.
I’m in my office until half past three.
I preach from the bible of the IPC.
If you learn to recite it, you’ll get your degree.
       chorus:
       He preaches from the good book of the IPC.
       Recite it well, and you’ll get your degree.
I chose a hard science for my PhD.
But DE’s were a bit too much, you see.
Then I found a field invented just for me.
And now I teach sustainability.
       chorus:
       There’re no hard theorems, and there’s no DE.
       There’s nothing but sustainability.
I love wind turbines and I hate pine trees.
I spend my summers off of Waikiki.
I drive a Prius very carefully.
It has a bumper sticker that says three-fifty.
       chorus:
       He has a message for the world to see.
       A bumper sticker that says 350.
I’ve thought about it, and I just can’t see
Why everybody doesn’t think like me.
So I’m holding a conference here at UBC
And inviting all the members of my coterie.
       chorus:
       He’ll hold a conference here at UBC.
       He’ll bring in all the members of his coterie.
Our sponsor lineup now includes BP.
We’ll present our papers until half past three.
The Proceedings will be published soon by MIT.
All to promote sustainability!
       chorus:
       From BC all the way to MIT.
       Everyone promotes sustainability!
(musical finale)
Oh well. And I even test drove the thing on Chrome. (Just read over the nbsp’s.)
🙂 🙂
My house is in order. YOUR scientific leadership was busted practicing fraudulent fabrication of faked warming for over a dozen years.
YOUR scientific leadership got caught claiming a hockey stick generator was ”sophisticated climate math”.
YOUR scientific leadership got caught claiming the laws of chemistry can’t calculate the temperature of gas.
YOUR scientific leadership got caught claiming about six trees told the temperature of the entire planet.
YOUR scientific leadership got caught claiming warms spells in earth’s history, were caused by the CO2 that FOLLOWED those warm spells. Temps go up: emitted CO2 goes up. That’s as simple as it gets.
YOUR scientific leadership got caught not knowing that.
YOUR scientific leadership has gotten caught making scores of obviously intentional errors in falsely warming official records, and has been caught at it by at least in several instances the very person who owns this site.
YOUR scientific leadership got caught not knowing the infrared they claimed is boiling oceans, can’t heat water: It enforces additional evaporation cooling because it can’t enter, but it can contribute to evaporation and emission of subsequent, leftover, even MORE red, light.
YOUR scientific leadership got caught not knowing about the compression of the atmosphere being removed in your other leadership’s so called ‘climate’ models – scam programs to simply get grants- and being simply replaced with ”Add X = Y temp increase.”
My house IS in order.
I have never been fired from or investigated about any scientific endeavor with which I’ve had to do and I worked in applied chemistry and radiation communications radiation for many years.
You need to hang around with people who don’t get caught practicing fraud, while pasting their own faces over the portraits of NAZI war criminals.
Don’t lecture me until someone among my working scientist friends worldwide who keep this space age flashing and beeping, is caught practicing scam as a way of life, the way your scientific leadership has.
I have sent my paper: “The Academic Ape: Instinctive aggression and boundary enforcing behaviour in academia” to the conference organiser.
Way cool. Although I am in correspondence with Prof. Gerrard and assumability will receive all symposium results per his commitment, please post your paper separately so that your opinions are assuredly accurately reflected.
I’m concerned that some of the really wackadoodle “skeptic” opinions will skew any rational review of skeptical literature by those submitting literature review materials at the symposium. I’d suggest that serious skeptics submit to Prof. Gerrard papers they consider to be representative of skeptical viewpoints. He could then submit them to possible reviewers for their consideration at his discretion. Fer christsakes people, engage!
Dave Fair