From Spiked-online.com
(h/t to Trevor Gunter)
NOTE FROM ANTHONY: this topic is rather contentious, even though temptation abounds and emotions will run high, please refrain from playing climate gutter ball. Comments will be snipped that stray far from decorum.
Wednesday 4 March 2009
Pathologising dissent? Now that’s Orwellian
Brendan O’Neill
A few months ago, for a joke, I set up a Facebook group called ‘Climate change denial is a mental disorder’. It’s a satirical campaigning hub for people who think that climate change denial should be recognised as a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association, and that its sufferers – who probably engage in ‘regular chanting and intensive brainwashing sessions in cult-like surroundings’ – should be offered ‘eco-lobotomies’ to remove ‘the denying part of their brain’. The group now has 42 members. Yes, some have signed up because they get the joke, but others are serious subscribers to the denial-as-insanity idea. ‘Thank God I’ve found this group’, says one new member, who is sick of other Facebook groups being ‘hijacked’ by unhinged eco-sceptics.
The idea that ‘climate change denial’ is a psychological disorder – the product of a spiteful, wilful or simply in-built neural inability to face up to the catastrophe of global warming – is becoming more and more popular amongst green-leaning activists and academics. And nothing better sums up the elitism and authoritarianism of the environmentalist lobby than its psychologisation of dissent. The labelling of any criticism of the politics of global warming, first as ‘denial’, and now as evidence of mass psychological instability, is an attempt to write off all critics and sceptics as deranged, and to lay the ground for inevitable authoritarian solutions to the problem of climate change. Historically, only the most illiberal and misanthropic regimes have treated disagreement and debate as signs of mental ill-health.
This weekend, the University of West England is hosting a major conference on climate change denial. Strikingly, it’s being organised by the university’s Centre for Psycho-Social Studies. It will be a gathering of those from the top of society – ‘psychotherapists, social researchers, climate change activists, eco-psychologists’ – who will analyse those at the bottom of society, as if we were so many flitting, irrational amoeba under an eco-microscope. The organisers say the conference will explore how ‘denial’ is a product of both ‘addiction and consumption’ and is the ‘consequence of living in a perverse culture which encourages collusion, complacency and irresponsibility’ (1). It is a testament to the dumbed-down, debate-phobic nature of the modern academy that a conference is being held not to explore ideas – to interrogate, analyse and fight over them – but to tag them as perverse.
Leading green writers have welcomed the West England get-together to study the denying masses. One eco-columnist says the conference might generate ideas for dealing with those who are ‘pathologically’ opposed to the environmental movement (pathology, according to my OED, is the study of ‘morbid or abnormal mental or moral conditions’) (2). Environmentalists recognise the inherent elitism of saying that, while they brave few can see things clearly, the rest of us are somehow disordered (greens are the ‘watchful ones amongst the slaves’, according to one environmentalist writer); yet they seem unashamed. The eco-columnist says this weekend’s conference will be useful because where ‘mainstream politics now largely “gets” environmentalism’, there is still a sceptical mass, ‘a baying and growing crowd, largely consisting of people resistant to the prospect of ever having to alter their lifestyles’. Apparently this crowd ‘gathers to hurl invective’ at environmentalist ideas, such as recycling and low-energy lightbulbs (3).
In a sense, this vision of elite, brainy environmentalists on one side and a baying, insult-hurling crowd on the other speaks, however accidentally and however crudely, to an underlying truth: environmentalism remains a largely elitist project, beloved of politicians, priests and prudes keen to control people’s behaviour and curb our excessive lifestyles, and it rubs many ‘ordinary people’ up the wrong way. Of course much of the public goes along with the environmentalist ethos, bowing to the central idea that mankind is destructive and observing such rituals as sorting their rubbish, but they do so half-heartedly, recognising that, fundamentally, greens’ anti-consumerist, anti-reproduction, anti-travel arguments run counter to their own personal aspirations. Yet rather than recognise this frequently hidden divide between the green elite and the ‘baying crowd’ as one built on differences of opinion, on clashing aspirations, even on rational assessments by sections of the public that recycling is a waste of time, increasingly environmentalists pathologise it, turning it into evidence of their wisdom in contrast to the public’s mental instability.
University departments, serious authors, think-tanks and radical activists are embracing the ‘psychological disorder’ view of climate change scepticism. At Columbia University in New York, the Global Roundtable on Public Attitudes to Climate Change studies the ‘completely baffling’ response of the public to the threat of climate change, exploring why the public has been ‘so slow to act’ despite the ‘extraordinary information’ provided by scientists. Apparently, our slack response is partly a result of our brain’s inability to assess ‘pallid statistical information’ in the face of fear (4). The Ecologist magazine also talks about the ‘psychology of climate change denial’ and says the majority of people (excluding those ‘handfuls of people who have already decided to stop being passive bystanders’: the green elite again) have responded to warnings of global warming by sinking into ‘self-deception and mass denial’ (5). An online magazine called Climate Change Denial is dedicated to analysing the public’s ‘weird and disturbed’ response to climate change (6).
John Naish, the celebrated author of the anti-consumerism treatise Enough!, says our consumerist behaviour, with its promise of ‘ecological disaster’, ultimately springs from the fact that we’re all using the ‘wrong brain’. Our culture, all those flashy ads and temptations to buy, buy, buy and be fat and happy, is aimed at stimulating our ‘primordial instinct’, our ‘reptilian brain, which is responsible for arousal, basic life functions and sex’, says Naish. It neglects and makes lazy our ‘neocortex, the intelligent brain we evolved in the Pleicestocene era’. In short, we’re behaving like animals rather than intelligent beings; indeed, says Naish, our consumer culture is sending us ‘knuckle-dragging into ecological disaster’ (7). In a less hysterical and monkey-obsessed fashion, Al Gore, the king of climate change activism, says the media are warping people’s minds and actively encouraging thoughtlessness and climate change denial, giving rise to a public response to ecological disaster that is not ‘modulated by logic, reason or reflective thought’ (8).
The labelling of those who question certain scientific ideas or green ways of life as ‘deniers’, ‘addicts’ and ‘reptiles’ with a ‘baffling’ inability to understand The Science and act accordingly has a deeply censorious bent. If ‘climate change denial’ is a form of mass denial and self-deception, a fundamentally psychological disorder, then there is no need to engage in a meaningful public debate; instead people just need to be treated. Thus the Ecologist says ‘denial cannot simply be countered with information’; indeed there is apparently ‘plentiful historical evidence that increased information may even intensify denial’ (9). The respected British think-tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research, goes so far as to insist that ‘the task of climate change agencies is not to persuade by rational argument but in effect to develop and nurture a new “common sense”’ (10). This is the logical conclusion to treating disagreement as ‘denial’ and dissent as a ‘disorder’: no debate, no real information, just an insidious demand to change The Culture in order to relax the wrong side of our brains or to inject us with a new commonsensical outlook.
The psychologisation of climate change denial – even the very use of that term: denial – reveals how utterly aloof and cut off are the environmental elitists from mass society. They cannot comprehend, indeed are ‘baffled’ by, our everyday behaviour, our desire to have families, our resistance to hectoring, our dream of being wealthier, better travelled, our hopes of living life to the full. For them, such behaviour is irresponsible and it runs counter to the ‘extraordinary information’ provided by scientists. They seriously expect people to make life decisions on the basis of pie charts and graphs drawn up in laboratories in Switzerland, rather than on the basis of what they and their families need and, yes, what they want. That the green lobby is so perturbed by our failure to act in accordance with scientific findings shows the extent to which, for them, The Science is a new gospel truth and religious-style guide to life, and anyone who disobeys it is a sinner, heretic or deranged individual, a moral leper of the twenty-first century.
Psychologising dissent, and refusing to recognise, much less engage with, the substance of people’s disagreements – their political objections, their rational criticisms, their desire to do things differently – is the hallmark of authoritarian regimes. In the Soviet Union, outspoken critics of the ruling party were frequently tagged as mentally disordered and faced, as one Soviet dissident described it, ‘political exile to mental institutions’ (11). There they would be treated with narcotics, tranquillisers and even electric shock therapy. In George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, O’Brien, the torturer in Room 101, offers to cure our hero Winston Smith of his anti-party thinking. ‘You are mentally deranged!’ he tells him. Today the word ‘Orwellian’ is massively overused, to describe everything from fingerprint library cards to supermarket loyalty cards, but treating your dissenters as deranged? That really is Orwellian, and we should declare permanent war against it.
Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked. Visit his website here. His satire on the green movement – Can I Recycle My Granny and 39 Other Eco-Dilemmas – is published by Hodder & Stoughton in October. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).)
It is such a relief to finally discover what is really wrong with me. I feel so … liberated.
Well, since the idea of spending real money on a symbolic gesture towards a non-existent problem makes me crazy, they are probably right.
The only mental disorder is the AGW scared half to death masses that don’t yet realize the place is cooling off. But that insanity is temporary. They are now starting to figure out why. The same nutty prophecy of doom & gloom ice age cometh now telling them they will doom & gloom fry and drown.
When the drug of fear wears off, they’ll be royally ticked.
It always does wear off.
It actually gets old and wears itself out.
No so lucky to be twice wrong.
That’s Under the Bus with you material.
I have to pinch myself these days to make sure I’m not having a nightmare. Really, WTF is going on with these people?
Anyone who wants to argue or discuss the science of Climate Change, is obviously deranged. The science is settled.
Why would anyone listen to these flat-earthers? Why should a crazy person be allowed to spew their inanities on the radio, television, magazines, newspapers, websites or internet blogs?
Even if these people make up the majority of the population, it is only evidence of the insidiousness of their mental condition. We must help these lost souls. We must do it for the children.
To debate would just be silly.
http://www.crm114.com/algore/quiz.html
I am inclined believe their is some psychologic aspects to this debate that need exmining. However in an ironic twist of fate, I have envisoned the AGW crowd as having an innate need to believe humans are at the center of the universe and thus provide the illusion of control over our destiny. They have been struggling to regain this central status since science and the likes of Galileo and Copernicus stripped them of their illusions. Now in the guise of the scientists’ sheep’s clothing they try to place humans back in the center of the universe, where all climate change is the result of our bad behavior. And if we humans behave the universe and the climate will once again become static and pure and good.
This denialist and my leper colony of hibernating plants, are bracing for yet another Seattle snow. How timely to be told that a lobotomy will make all this cold go away.. Can anyone say PDO? Oh, bad word! I will now go and give myself chock treatment. Bad denialist… bad plants…. AGW true, cold not happening….
1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, Atlas Shrugged…how prescient these authors were…
That’s the ticket — send enough skeptics to re-education camps and the rest of the skeptical public will learn to be careful about what they say and whom they speak in front of…
Anthony — speaking of confences, I trust we’ll be getting an earful from you about the conference you’ll be attending starting Sunday? Saw the program that’s been laid out – sounds like a busy three days.
REPLY: I haven’t decided yet if I’ll blog about it. I have quite a bit to do – Anthony
Methinks they do project a bit too much. The Bolsheviks put dissenters in the mental hospitals and tortured them with chemical injections.
Anybody know why Mr. O’Neill’s blog ceased being updated after Oct. 7, 2008?
If you truly understand todays world and the agenda of those behind the green terrorism movement, you will know these people are deadly serious and those who will be labelled as denialists will be treated as heretics were in Galileos time. This has nothing to do with science. Science is simply used to hide it’s agenda and give it credibility.
Some quotes give a hint about the thinking behind this movement.
“The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
– Club of Rome,
“We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination… So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts…Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
– Dr. Stephen Schneider, Stanford Professor of Climatology,
lead author of many IPCC reports
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.”
– Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation
“The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.”
– emeritus professor Daniel Botkin
“We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis…”
– David Rockefeller, Club of Rome executive member
“The emerging ‘environmentalization’ of our civilization and the need for vigorous action in the interest of the entire global community will inevitably have multiple political consequences. Perhaps the most important of them will be a gradual change in the status of the United Nations. Inevitably, it must assume some aspects of a world government.”
– Mikhail Gorbachev, State of the World Forum
“I envisage the prinicles of the Earth Charter to be a new form of the ten commandments. They lay the foundation for a sustainable global earth community.”
– Mikhail Gorbachev, co-author of The Earth Charter
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsiblity to bring that about?”
– Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme
“The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.”
– Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund
“Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty, reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control.”
– Professor Maurice King
“Complex technology of any sort is an assault on human dignity. It would be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we might do with it.”
– Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute
“The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet.”
– Jeremy Rifkin, Greenhouse Crisis Foundation
“Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”
– Prof Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University
“My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with it’s full complement of species, returning throughout the world.”
-Dave Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!
“A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. We must shift our efforts from the treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions.”
– Prof Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb
“I don’t claim to have any special interest in natural history, but as a boy I was made aware of the annual fluctuations in the number of game animals and the need to adjust the cull to the size of the surplus population.”
– Prince Philip, preface of Down to Earth
“A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”
– Ted Turner, founder of CNN and major UN donor
“… the resultant ideal sustainable population is hence more than 500 million but less than one billion.”
– Club of Rome, Goals for Mankind
“If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.”
– Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, patron of the World Wildlife Fund
“I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.”
– John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal
“The fate of mankind, as well as of religion, depends upon the emergence of a new faith in the future. Armed with such a faith, we might find it possible to resanctify the earth.”
– Al Gore, Earth in the Balance
“The greatest hope for the Earth lies in religionists and scientists uniting to awaken the world to its near fatal predicament and then leading mankind out of the bewildering maze of international crises into the future Utopia of humanist hope.”
– Club of Rome, Goals for Mankind
“It is the responsibility of each human being today to choose between the force of darkness and the force of light. We must therefore transform our attitudes, and adopt a renewed respect for the superior laws of Divine Nature.”
– Maurice Strong, first Secretary General of UNEP
The following is not satire, unfortunately.
There is one group of people which truly believes in The Free Hand idea. Man’s interference with the markets is evil, or something like that.
There is another group of people which hates this idea, but they truly believe something similar. Their Free Hand refers to Nature without Man’s interference.
Of course these two extremes hate each other. Most of us are caught in the middle of this battle. Most of us are gardeners who like nature but are quite happy to shape it to our own desires. Even the AGW group may end up trying to change Nature to suit the needs of mankind. Ah, the irony.
Again we find sincere conviction as a substitute for rational thought. I first came across it when arguing with my sister as a kid. i couldn’t understand why my arguments had to be rational and defensible and her’s didn’t, thus if she declared me ‘wrong’ sincerely enough I never got a word in edgeways.
These AGW cultists seem more and more like a bossy kid sister.
Obviously we have transcended science to a state of nirvana-like blissful enlightenment much as ice sublimates to vapor with no trace of water.
Mr Gore again yesterday rejected an appeal to debate his position by saying:
“The scientific community has gone through this chapter and verse. We have long since passed the time when we should pretend this is a ‘on the one hand, on the other hand’ issue,” he said. “It’s not a matter of theory or conjecture, for goodness sake,” he added. (http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/03/05/a-heated-exchange-al-gore-confronts-his-critics/)
It is so intuitively obvious that we are obviously in need of psychological solace if we somehow missed it. It’s so unfortunate.
I used to teach in a University – it was my job to be sceptical.
Tovarish. Tung Shih. Comrads. Get used to the idea that science does NOT drive the agenda. HItler’s anthropologists willingly, even eagerly, supported the idea of the Aryan master-race. The Soviet Union really did consign dissidents to mental hospitals. Couldn’t happen here? Solomon Asch and Stanley Milgram demonstrated that it really, really could.
Our current administration is steam-rollering social change no matter what “science” says. Just depends in how you define “science”.
Never has so irrational an idea fed so many so well…
I lost a friend of fifty years when he discovered I did not believe. His accusation that I was a monster caring not for the future of my children and grandchildren stunned me. I love those kids, and he knows it; but he was suddenly blinded to what he had previously accepted and admired by my very few words of CO2 doubt.
Is this conference figuring out how to treat the wrong people?
… the Institute for Public Policy Research, goes so far as to insist that ‘the task of climate change agencies is not to persuade by rational argument but in effect to develop and nurture a new “common sense”’.
Much thought and planning has gone into the particular strategy above. These people know what they are doing. The large advertising budgets are being put to effective use. The “We Can Solve It” ads were particularly well done. They were very calm and seemingly rational. They used both political parties, different races, construction workers and others to calmly state the new “Common Sense”. They used the “appeal to authority” and the “bandwagon” approaches.
It makes me wonder if, as we speak, the people at some of the more notoriously inhospitable AGW websites are being coached by some high-powered PR firms in the subtleties of manipulation.
If you are welcomed and treated nicely at one of these sites… look out.
Imagine pointing out the obvious shortcomings of the “hockeystick graph” at an AGW website and being answered like this.
Well, Mike we understand how you feel because we felt the same way until we found out that, yes there are shortcomings in the graph, but they are being reworked right now! In fact it appears that some of the conclusions may even be completely wrong as you stated. Thank you so much for visiting us here and don’t be a stranger!!! 🙂 Don’t forget to recycle!
Now I understand … All my failures in life!!!(sob)
I’ll have to admit that I got me knickers in a twist in an earlier thread. I clearly don’t like people making assumptions about me.
Note to self: When reading AGW proponent blog posts, eat chocolate and drink red wine. Then go find my man in…oh…say, about two hours later.
I don’t want to go to a re-education camp. I never really liked camp too much. I was allergic to horses, and hated singing songs around the campfire. My favorite parts of camp were target shooting, swimming in the lake, and the girl I met there. Will there be cute girls at our re-education camps? If so, I might not struggle so much.
But wait, if there are cute girls there, they’ll also be afflicted with the same mental disorder as I, and quite honestly I’m getting sick of meeting women with mental disorders. The last one needed her lithium adjusted, if you know what I mean.
So, maybe it’s a good thing I don’t have kids, since the last time this sort of thing happened it was the kids that mostly reported their parents.
So, wait again… maybe I should be looking for cute women with mental disorders, that way I’ll find someone who’s just fine! Or at least, someone who thinks like I do.
Anthony, I apologize for my “toxin” commenting yesterday (although, um, someone had to say it and I was trying to be fairly polite about it)… you have now helped me see that all of my problems are directly related to my newly-identified mental disorder!
I go, forward, confident in my direction!
About two weeks ago I wrote to editors at The Wall Street Journal and Scientific American magazine asking them to report on the up-coming conference*; also to one of the Seattle newspapers because they had just reported on WA’s climate report. So I guess my name is on somebody’s list.
http://www.globalwarmingheartland.org
I’m now going out to lock the gate and turn on the security cameras and electrify the fences. If I turn up missing, send help!
@ pft (21:43:01) :
Excellent collection of quotes.
“If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.”
– Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, patron of the World Wildlife Fund
Starting at the top, s’il vous plait.
I suspect that 50% of the participants truly believe the skeptics have psychological problems and 25% don’t. The other 25% don’t believe they do but are pushing this conference as they are employed in the climate scare business and need to keep the gravy flowing.
Oh, to long for the days when we huddled in caves.
Leaving to kill our food and hope that this new plant we found doesn’t kill our kid. (You know that we won’t try it first.)
Those fond memories of the days when typhus and plague, flu and exposure destroyed our neighbors.
What must we think today as we live longer and stay warm and well fed.
What fools we must be!
After all, you haven’t really lived until your dinner chases you down the hill.
“Al Gore… says the media are warping people’s minds and actively encouraging thoughtlessness and climate change denial,”
The Weather Channel, National Geographic Channel, and (for shame!) The Science Channel all run a regular schedule of global warming shows. There’s even a green channel, ‘planet green’, that has 24 hour a day green programs, including some global warming alarmism. But there are no channels that have regular programming encouraging global warming skepticism.
What is Al Gore talking about? Did this conference focus on the correct group of people?
I’d say “scratches head” but I’ve done enough of that the past 2 years. I don’t want to wear out a bald spot.
What are the chances that some attendees start looking in the mirror?
pft (21:43:01) : those who will be labelled as denialists will be treated as heretics were in Galileo’s time.
Well said pft. And great quotes.
This is all excellent news – the more hysterical and abusive the warming cultists become, the sooner normal people will realize that their pseudo-scientific ravings are complete nonsense.
http://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Mind-Psychological-Political-Madness/dp/097795630X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236408056&sr=8-1
Looks like Dr. Rossiter will have to write another book on green madness, which goes well beyond ordinary left wing thinking, as the green-agenda.com site shows.
Here’s an item I posted a couple of weeks ago in a Met Office thread, where it was OT. Here it fits in just fine. Deniers are not just mad but bad: “people literally suppressing truth.”
Here’s a one-page article,”Manufacturing Confusion” by Clive Thompson, a properly polished pebble, found on p. 38 of the February issue of “Wired,” and online at:
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-02/st_thompson
(The author’s e-mail is: clive@clivethompson.net. )
(I wish a thread discussing this will be set up.)
Here’s the article, in full. (Note the rhetorical guilt-by-association practiced in the opening three sentences. Note also the concluding paragraph, which recommends the AGW-censored Wikipedia as authoritative.):
“Is global warming caused by humans? Is Barack Obama a Christian? Is evolution a well-supported theory?
You might think these questions have been incontrovertibly answered in the affirmative, proven by settled facts. But for a lot of Americans, they haven’t. Among Republicans, belief in anthropogenic global warming declined from 52 percent to 42 percent between 2003 and 2008. Just days before the election, nearly a quarter of respondents in one Texas poll were convinced that Obama is a Muslim. And the proportion of Americans who believe God did not guide evolution? It’s 14 percent today, a two-point decline since the ’90s, according to Gallup.
What’s going on? Normally, we expect society to progress, amassing deeper scientific understanding and basic facts every year. Knowledge only increases, right?
Robert Proctor doesn’t think so. A historian of science at Stanford, Proctor points out that when it comes to many contentious subjects, our usual relationship to information is reversed: Ignorance increases.
He has developed a word inspired by this trend: agnotology. Derived from the Greek root agnosis, it is “the study of culturally constructed ignorance.”
As Proctor argues, when society doesn’t know something, it’s often because special interests work hard to create confusion. Anti-Obama groups likely spent millions insisting he’s a Muslim; church groups have shelled out even more pushing creationism. The oil and auto industries carefully seed doubt about the causes of global warming. And when the dust settles, society knows less than it did before.
“People always assume that if someone doesn’t know something, it’s because they haven’t paid attention or haven’t yet figured it out,” Proctor says. “But ignorance also comes from people literally suppressing truth—or drowning it out—or trying to make it so confusing that people stop caring about what’s true and what’s not.”
After years of celebrating the information revolution, we need to focus on the countervailing force: The disinformation revolution. The ur-example of what Proctor calls an agnotological campaign is the funding of bogus studies by cigarette companies trying to link lung cancer to baldness, viruses—anything but their product.
Think of the world of software today: Tech firms regularly sue geeks who reverse-engineer their code to look for flaws. They want their customers to be ignorant of how their apps work.
Even the financial meltdown was driven by ignorance. Credit-default swaps were designed not merely to dilute risk but to dilute knowledge; after they’d changed hands and been serially securitized, no one knew what they were worth.
Maybe the Internet itself has inherently agnotological side effects. People graze all day on information tailored to their existing worldview. And when bloggers or talking heads actually engage in debate, it often consists of pelting one another with mutually contradictory studies they’ve Googled: “Greenland’s ice shield is melting 10 years ahead of schedule!” vs. “The sun is cooling down and Earth is getting colder!”
As Farhad Manjoo notes in True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society, if we argue about what a fact means, we’re having a debate. If we argue about what the facts are, it’s agnotological Armageddon, where reality dies screaming.
Can we fight off these attempts to foster ignorance? Despite his fears about the Internet’s combative culture, Proctor is optimistic. During last year’s election, campaign-trail lies were quickly exposed via YouTube and transcripts. The Web makes secrets harder to keep.
We need to fashion information tools that are designed to combat agnotological rot. Like Wikipedia: It encourages users to build real knowledge through consensus, and the result manages to (mostly) satisfy even people who hate each other’s guts. Because the most important thing these days might just be knowing what we know.”
Josef Stalin treated threats the same way. Any dissenters were called enemies of the people and sent to mental hospitals to be reprogrammed, imprisoned or sent to labour camps.
The Hanebuth Curve
An interesting paper that elaborates on recent (since 10,000 years ago) sea-level change is by Hanebuth and others (Rapid flooding of the Sunda Shelf – a late-glacial sea-level record. Science, 288: 1033-1035, 2000).
The Hanebuth Curve is also shown on my web site (http://www.geoscience-environment.com/es551/back_ground.html#quaternary).
Some readers may be interested in evidence for sea level change in Southeast Asia 5000 years ago. (URL: http://www.geoscience-environment.com/ge703/index_sungai_ara.html).
Literature review for the study documented evidence that around 5000 years ago, global sea level was about 2 meters (6 feet) higher than now, coinciding with dates estimated for the Climatic Optimum, when the Sahara Desert was host to hippos, cattle and other fauna dependent on ample water sources.
The time-scale used by geologists is completely different from the time-scale used by most people concerned about global warming. And the different time-scale leads to a different perspective on climate change unrelated to the burning of fossil fuels.
One thing you won’t find on my web site is a discussion of the timing of the current interglacial period. Five years ago, when I was doing the degree, the evidence was not very strong that the present interglacial may be much longer than those of the last 400,000 years.
Instead of the usual interglacial period of about 20,000 years, the one we live in could last 50,000 years. The increased duration of the present interglacial was first estimated from astronomical calculations carried out by A. Berger. However, recent analysis of ice cores confirmed that the interglacial of 400,000 years ago lasted about 50,000 years. Still to be determined is the length of the interglacial 800,000 years ago.
The reason why these longer interglacial would be interesting today is that sea level rose about 20 meters (65 feet) during the last long interglacial, called OIS 11.
We cannot draw from this any conclusion about what to expect during the next century or even the next millennium. Sea level will fluctuate no matter what mankind does to keep it constant. All we can say from the viewpoint of the astronomical model is that sometime in the next 30,000 years all high rises built on sea coasts will be submerged to about the fifth floor.
pft (21:43:01) : (List of quotes) Thank you, pft… well, I will modify that “thanks”. In some ways I am not sure I really want to read such obscenities. Self-hate really should be kept silent lest we, the general populace, rise up in decision that such persons are a danger to even themselves and should be padded up…
…at least they are always proved wrong in the end; which is some small relief.
here we have the alleged mental disorder, there we heard about the “horrible people who might make sinful use of” climate change disproving data.
just combine these two – wouldn’t that be a nice job for the “new” BBC ?
To the tune of: They Are Night Zombies
N-A-S-A G-I-S-S
will-be-there-to-cry-the-crisis
N-O-A-A I-P-C-C
No-one-said-it-would-be-easy
Shaking their fingers in the air
Finding the way to make us care
Striving to make us see their worth
Striving to make us save the earth
They know they know what makes us so
We are too weak we are too slow
And they must they therefore anoint
Before before the tipping point
H-0-8-3 Dew Point T-Max
A-S-O-S Feedback Carbon tax
G-I-S-S U Columbia
U-S-H-C-N Tuscumbia
P-D-O A-M-O IPO
A-A-O N-A-O IDO
U-H-I L-I-A got to go
(Hey-Ho! Hey-Ho!)
A-B-B-E-V-I-L-L-E
Who remains to sound the re-vi-le?
C-O-L-U-M-B-I-A
Who remains to C-Y-A?
T-OBS FILNET make it rise
S-H-A-P then Homogenize
U-N G-C-M outliers
Al Gore Hansen jail deniers
C-R-S M-M-T-S
Yield to C-R-N-4 B-S
N-C-D-C CO-OP Surf-A
Who remains to do the survey?
Years ago, I attended my brother’s wedding in the deepest part of the Southern Bible Belt. One lady from the bride’s side made conversation by asking what I did. I told her I worked in the field of evolutionary biology. She said she’d pray for me.
AGW alarmists are kind of like that except they won’t pray for me, but rather relegate me to the hinterlands of social banishment.
AGW alarmists and Creationists do share something in common. It matters not a wit the good, empirical data and scientific analysis one presents. Facts that demolish their illusions mean only that I am a bad person for questioning their “truth.” Deep down, they really hate me for it.
How can we overcome this growing level of stupid around us?
They lie about even the smallest things. For example, saying “I brushed my teeth today,” when they didn’t.
They add exaggerations to every sentence.
They change their story all the time.
They act very defensively when you question their statements.
They believe what they say is true, when everyone else knows it isn’t.
Here’s an alternate “checklist”:
Lies when it is very easy to tell the truth.
Lies to get sympathy, to look beter, to save their butt, etc.
Fools people at first but once they get to know him, no one believes anything they ever say.
May have a personality disorder.
Extremely manipulative.
Has been caught in lies repeatedly.
Never fesses up to the lies.
Is a legend in their own mind.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_can_you_tell_if_someone_is_a_pathological_liar
Back in 1950’s-1960’s, we had similar approach to all who disagreed with the wise policies of our all-knowing Communist Party of Czechoslovakia: we put those people in the lunatics’ asylums. It stood to reason then, that no-one, but NO-ONE, in his right mind, could have disagreed with those policies.Simple as that. Now, we are getting similar treatment from the Greeny Left.
Nothing new under the Sun.
Left changed its name, but not it’s spots.
One of the best analyses of interwar Europe (once you could get your head round his terms and definitions) was written by Willhelm Reich in his book ‘The Mass Psychology of Fascism’. Reich went a radical in his older age, and ended up dying in an american prison because the powers that be didn’t like his views on the repression of sexuality and his polemics against power structures.
His books were burned in piles outside the libraries of both America and Russia during the cold war period.
This fact alone is a good recommendation for reading them.
In a delicious irony, I found out that Reich lived in a community run ranch which was originally set up by a disaffected english industrialist who left for the land of the free after his ironworks was compulsarily purchased and knocked down by parliament to make way for a railway. His home in England also ended up as a community centre which invites groups of people including those with conditions such as autism to come and participate in organic gardening and group therapy. I do voluntary work there to maintain and improve the grounds and systems, including my rainwater recovery and irrigation project.
One of the polemic short books Reich wrote was titled ‘Listen Little Man!’
It perfectly sums up what is happening here in terms of the power relations between the ‘technochracy’ and the ‘common herd’.
Scientology all over again? But at a scale about wich Hubbard could not have imagined in his wildest dreams, and that man had a lot of imagination.
you need to free those body-thetans, if you free yourself than you can do things, ooh wait that was Tom Cruise….
Its a pyramid scheme for the AGW followers, they can’t step out because they are the ones who know, they are the ones who are right. You can’t step out it, because you will loose all your friends, family, security (just like those who step out of the Church of Scientology). They do it for us, our childeren, our grand childeren.
And the idiot mumbles, what about those 25.000 to 30.000 childeren (about 1 in every 3 secconds) in the third world that will have died within the next 24 hours because they don’t have access to clean water, basic health care and food and above all that what is most needed, cheap energy!
The worst thing that can happen to the third world is a colder and dry climate and development aid-programmes headed by the UN.
We must do this for our childeren en their childeren.
Not only is the idea that lowering your CO2 is good a very bad idea, it is also dangerous and it will definitely kill millions of people within the years to come, and then they suggest that i am bonking mad?
I feel the need for some therapeutic cleansing.
The need arises because, on Friday, I attended an all-day seminar at UCLA (U. California at Los Angeles) at which the AGW faithful gathered, repeated their many mantras, and applauded long and loud. In fairness, there were a couple of voices of reason among the many panelists. But the AGW faithful heard from Mary Nichols, Chair of the Air Resources Board, and Senator Fran Pavley, (California state senator, co-author of AB 32), who both repeated the seas are rising, the globe is warming, and we are just SO happy that our AB 32 is now in place so we will save the world.
No kidding.
About the seas rising, Ms. Nichols stated that the seas COULD rise 8 inches in the next 40 years, and that would be devastating to the half-million people living near the Sacramento River delta and its inadequate levees. No mention of a range of possibilities or likelihood, confidence intervals, or basis for that claim of 8 inches in 40 years. No mention that the satellite data shows the sea level is falling offshore San Francisco. The 8 inch rise was Just thrown out there, for the faithful to accept. And they did.
Ms. Nichols flatly stated that hurricanes are growing more violent and more frequent. No one challenged her on that.
Ms. Nichols also stated that the summer heat waves are growing more intense, and wildfires are getting out of hand. One person (maybe he reads WUWT!) did ask her if that was not related to planned burns by federal forest officials? Ms. Nichols spoke in circles and did not answer on that one.
We also heard that the people must be “kept in their neighborhoods” and given disincentives to drive anywhere, as that will cut down CO2. (that was from the urban planner). We then heard from the water guy, who told us that we must install a separate water distribution system to reduce the pumping energy required for potable water. I am still trying to untangle that one. Apparently (according to him, anyway) 19 percent of all California energy (I think he meant electric power) is expended on producing, purifying, pumping, and distributing fresh water. So, if we install a second parallel system, we don’t have to pump the water? I don’t get that one.
The Power guy from Los Angeles DWP (Dept of Water and Power) assured us that DWP will cease importing power from the nasty coal-fired plants in Utah, from which DWP imports about 48 percent of its power. This would occur by 2019 and 2027, just as soon as the existing power purchase contracts expire. By then, the utility will produce power from the oh-so-green geothermal sources at the Salton Sea, build the long transmission lines, and power will still flow in Los Angeles. I tried to get my question asked, but the microphone-dispensing-people did not make it over to me. (these plants may emit sulfur (H2S), briny wastewater, and mercury, depending on the geologic formation).
We were also told that the Obama AB 32 copy-cat plan for the U.S. is coming along just fine, and we should see a federal law by late this year. Meanwhile, California’s death-stab at the car companies is coming along nicely, as the U.S. EPA held hearings yesterday to decide when (not if, mind you) California will be granted its more strict tail-pipe emission standards for CO2 on all new-cars sold in-state. Just what the highly-profitable car companies need, a third emissions standard. (One is for Europe, one is for the U.S. without California’s strict standard, and the third is the Pavley standards for California).
DWP had a few moments of comedy, too. We were told that each household in their utility district can drop by the department and pick up two compact fluorescent light bulbs for free. (Well, I thought that was funny…as if that will make any difference!) This next bit was not funny, but serious: low-income Californians can request a new refrigerator from DWP, and they will bring over a new, energy-efficient refrigerator, install it, and take away the old one. No charge. Then more comedy: we can also expect to have free neighborhood make-over parties, during which homes will be weatherized to plug the drafty spots, shade-trees will be planted, and rooftops painted white. This was met by great applause. I can just picture the conversation at the front porch in certain neighborhoods: Hi, we’re from DWP and we are here to weatherize your house, can we come in? Uh, hold on, we were not expecting you, we need to clean up the place first. Ok, we can wait! Furious activity to put away the drugs and the paraphernalia and the guns and ammo. (This is Los Angeles, remember?)
We were also told that California is having a water shortage, a drought actually, now in its third year. Completely disregarding the drought line from earlier, we were told that bio-fuels require an awful lot of water to grow and manufacture. Bio-fuels are mandated under AB 32. My question (again, unasked) was, hey fellas! Remember that drought discussion? From where can we obtain all that water for growing and processing bio-fuels?
No one stood to say the seas are not rising.
No one stood to ask about the recent cold snaps, and snowfall.
No one stood to ask about the near-normal arctic ice extent, and the increased Antarctic ice.
No one stood to ask about the cooling oceans.
No one stood to ask about the cooling atmosphere since 2002.
No one stood to state there is zero relation between CO2 and climate warming.
I need some therapy.
This is an excerpt from the prospectus for the conference -which I had originally thought to be a spoof until I read the REAL spoof that is the lead article on this thread ;
“Man-made climate change poses an unprecedented threat to the global ecosystem and yet the response, from national policy makers right through to individual consumers, remains tragically inadequate. The Centre for Psycho-Social Studies at the University of the West of England is organising a major interdisciplinary event Facing Climate Change on this topic at UWE on 7 March 2009. Facing Climate Change is the first national conference to specifically explore ‘climate change denial’.
This is the prospectus;
http://info.uwe.ac.uk/news/UWENews/article.asp?item=1438
This is a profile of the organiser
http://www.uwe.ac.uk/hlss/politics/staff_pHoggett.shtml
An excerpt from the profile linked above;
“He has longstanding interest in the role of emotion and unconscious forces in political behaviour and his current ESRC project focuses on the `emotion work’ required of regeneration workers as they negotiate the ethical dilemmas of their jobs. Major research contracts in the past have included the Home Office, Joseph Rowntree and the European Foundation.”
UK readers already know about the wilful waste of our taxes on the public sector and the EU by our profligate government and will only shake their heaed at more state funded idiocy. However, it is an indicator of the shape of things to come for American readers who don’t yet realise they elected a socialist as their president.
Tonyb
Fred Colbourne (23:25:13) :
You should re-post that material on sea-level rise in the thread just before this one, “Basic Geology Part 3.”
Welcome to the Tavistock Institute
Rigour, reflection and thoughtfulness are at the heart of what we do.
We work to improve the effectiveness of groups and organisations and, therefore, people’s lives. We bring insight and care to consultancy, applied research and evaluation – insight based on the social sciences. We help our clients work with the unexpected, and to learn and develop new and imaginative ways forward.
Our History
The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations was formally founded as a registered charity in September 1947. In our early work we brought together staff from different disciplines to find ways to apply psychoanalytic and open systems concepts to group and organisational life.
THE MODERN TIMES WORKPLACE
The history, context and early development of Socio-Technical Systems theory and practice is largely expressed in the work of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations.
Google – Dr. John Coleman The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations
This has been going on for a loooong time!
pft (21:43:01) :
Some more:
“The concept of national sovereignty has been an immutable, indeed sacred, principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation. It is simply not feasible for sovereignty to be exercised unilaterally by individual nation states, however powerful. The global community must be assured of environmental security.”
– Maurice Strong at the 1992 Earth Summit.
“Because I wanted influence in the United States.”
– Maurice Strong quoted in Saturday Night magazine.
“If we don’t change, our species will not survive… Frankly, we may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.”
– Maurice Strong quoted in the September 1, 1997 edition of National Review magazine.
“[The Earth Summit will play an important role in] reforming and strengthening the United Nations as the centerpiece of the emerging system of democratic global governance.”
– Maurice Strong quoted in the September 1, 1997 edition of National Review magazine.
“[I am] a socialist in ideology, a capitalist in methodology.”
– Maurice Strong as quoted in Macleans.
“[The Great Depression left me] frankly very radical.”
– Maurice Strong quoted in the September 1, 1997 edition of National Review magazine.
“Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.”
– Sir John Houghton, first chairman of IPCC and the person responsible for establishing the future emphasis of the IPCC reporting
“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”
– Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace, and the person often described by some IPCC leaders as the inspiration for their environmental efforts with respect to Climate Change
“The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift Global Consciousness to a higher level.”
– Al Gore, Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech
“A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.”
– Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies
“We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects. We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wilderness millions of acres of presently settled land.”
– David Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!
“Humanity is sitting on a time bomb. If the vast majority of the world’s scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet’s climate system into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced – a catastrophe of our own making.”
– Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth
“We are getting close to catastrophic tipping points, despite the fact that most people barely notice the warming yet.”
– Dr James Hansen, NASA researcher
“Climate Change will result in a catastrophic global sea level rise of seven meters. That’s bye-bye most of Bangladesh, Netherlands, Florida and would make London the new Atlantis.”
– Greenpeace International
“This planet is on course for a catastrophe. The existence of Life itself is at stake.”
– Dr Tim Flannery, Principal Research Scientist
“Climate Change is the greatest threat that human civilization has ever faced.”
– Angela Merkel, German Chancellor
“Climate change is real. Not only is it real, it’s here, and its effects are giving rise to a frighteningly new global phenomenon: the man-made natural disaster.”
– Barak Obama, US Presidential Candidate
“We simply must do everything we can in our power to slow down global warming before it is too late.”
– Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California
“Climate change should be seen as the greatest challenge to ever face mankind.”
– Prince Charles
“Climate change makes us all global citizens, we are truly all in this together.”
– Gordon Brown, British Prime Minister
“We have reached the critical moment of decision on climate change. Failure to act to now would be deeply and unforgivably irresponsible. We urgently require a global environmental revolution.”
– Tony Blair, former British PM
“We are close to a time when all of humankind will envision a global agenda that encompasses a kind of Global Marshall Plan to address the causes of poverty and suffering and environmental destruction all over the earth.”
– Al Gore, Earth in the Balance
“By the end of this century climate change will reduce the human population to a few breeding pairs surviving near the Arctic.”
– Sir James Lovelock, Revenge of Gaia
“In Nature organic growth proceeds according to a Master Plan, a Blueprint. Such a ‘master plan’ is missing from the process of growth and development of the world system. Now is the time to draw up a master plan for sustainable growth and world development based on global allocation of all resources and a new global economic system. Ten or twenty years form today it will probably be too late.”
– Club of Rome, Mankind at the Turning Point
“We need a new paradigm of development in which the environment will be a priority. World civilization as we know it will soon end. We have very little time and we must act. If we can address the environmental problem, it will have to be done within a new system, a new paradigm. We have to change our mindset, the way humankind views the world.”
– Mikhail Gorbachev, State of the World Forum
“The concept of national sovereignty has been immutable, indeed a sacred principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation.”
– UN Commission on Global Governance report
“Democracy is not a panacea. It cannot organize everything and it is unaware of its own limits. These facts must be faced squarely. Sacrilegious though this may sound, democracy is no longer well suited for the tasks ahead. The complexity and the technical nature of many of today’s problems do not always allow elected representatives to make competent decisions at the right time.”
– Club of Rome, The First Global Revolution
“The emerging ‘environmentalization’ of our civilization and the need for vigorous action in the interest of the entire global community will inevitably have multiple political consequences. Perhaps the most important of them will be a gradual change in the status of the United Nations. Inevitably, it must assume some aspects of a world government.”
– Mikhail Gorbachev, State of the World Forum
“I envisage the prinicles of the Earth Charter to be a new form of the ten commandments. They lay the foundation for a sustainable global earth community.”
– Mikhail Gorbachev, co-author of The Earth Charter
“In my view, after fifty years of service in the United Nations system, I perceive the utmost urgency and absolute necessity for proper Earth government. There is no shadow of a doubt that the present political and economic systems are no longer appropriate and will lead to the end of life evolution on this planet. We must therefore absolutely and urgently look for new ways.”
– Dr Robert Muller, UN Assistant Secretary General,
“Nations are in effect ceding portions of their sovereignty to the international community and beginning to create a new system of international environmental governance as a means of solving otherwise unmanageable crises.”
– Lester Brown, WorldWatch Institute
“Regionalism must precede globalism. We foresee a seamless system of governance from local communities, individual states, regional unions and up through to the United Nations itself.”
– UN Commission on Global Governance
“A keen and anxious awareness is evolving to suggest that fundamental changes will have to take place in the world order and its power structures, in the distribution of wealth and income. Perhaps only a new and enlightened humanism can permit mankind to negotiate this transition.”
– Club of Rome, Mankind at the Turning Point
“The alternative to the existing world order can only emerge as a result of a new human dimension of progress. We envision a revolution of the mind, a new way of thinking.”
– Mikhail Gorbachev, State of the World Forum
“Adopting a central organizing principle… means embarking on an all-out effort to use every policy and program, every law and institution… to halt the destruction of the environment.”
– Al Gore, Earth in the Balance
“Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources. This shift will demand that a concern for the environmental consequences of every human action be integrated into individual and collective decision-making at every level.”
– UN Agenda 21
“The current course of development is thus clearly unsustainable. Current problems cannot be solved by piecemeal measures. More of the same is not enough. Radical change from the current trajectory is not an option, but an absolute necessity. Fundamental economic, social and cultural changes that address the root causes of poverty and environmental degradation are required and they are required now.”
– from the Earth Charter website
“A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.”
– Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies
“The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.”
– Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund
“Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty, reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control.”
– Professor Maurice King
“We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects. We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wilderness millions of acres of presently settled land.”
– David Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!
“Complex technology of any sort is an assault on human dignity. It would be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we might do with it.”
– Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute
“The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet.”
– Jeremy Rifkin, Greenhouse Crisis Foundation
“Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”
– Prof Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University
“Our insatiable drive to rummage deep beneath the surface of the earth is a willful expansion of our dysfunctional civilization into Nature.”
– Al Gore, Earth in the Balance
“The big threat to the planet is people: there are too many, doing too well economically and burning too much oil.”
– Sir James Lovelock, BBC Interview
“Mankind is the most dangerous, destructive, selfish and unethical animal on the earth.”
– Michael Fox, vice-president of The Humane Society
“Humans on the Earth behave in some ways like a pathogenic micro-organism, or like the cells of a tumor.”
– Sir James Lovelock, Healing Gaia
“I don’t claim to have any special interest in natural history, but as a boy I was made aware of the annual fluctuations in the number of game animals and the need to adjust the cull to the size of the surplus population.”
– Prince Philip, preface of Down to Earth
“A reasonable estimate for an industrialized world society at the present North American material standard of living would be 1 billion. At the more frugal European standard of living, 2 to 3 billion would be possible.”
– United Nations, Global Biodiversity Assessment
“A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”
– Ted Turner, founder of CNN and major UN donor
“… the resultant ideal sustainable population is hence more than 500 million but less than one billion.”
– Club of Rome, Goals for Mankind
“I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.”
– John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal
“The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing.”
– Christopher Manes, Earth First!
“Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.”
– David Brower, first Executive Director of the Sierra Club
“The fate of mankind, as well as of religion, depends upon the emergence of a new faith in the future. Armed with such a faith, we might find it possible to resanctify the earth.”
– Al Gore, Earth in the Balance
“The greatest hope for the Earth lies in religionists and scientists uniting to awaken the world to its near fatal predicament and then leading mankind out of the bewildering maze of international crises into the future Utopia of humanist hope.”
– Club of Rome, Goals for Mankind
“What an incredible planet in the universe this will be when we will be one human family living in justice, peace, love and harmony with our divine Earth, with each other and with the heavens.”
– Robert Muller, UN Assistant Secretary General
“The earth is literally our mother, not only because we depend on her for nurture and shelter but even more because the human species has been shaped by her in the womb of evolution…. Our salvation depends upon our ability to create a religion of nature.”
– Rene Dubos, board member, Planetary Citizens
“Each element, plant, insect, fish and animal represents a certain aspect of Gaia’s – and our – being. In a way, we are Gaia’s intelligence and awareness – currently lost in self-destructive madness. We must acknowledge, respect and love her for being the Mother she is to us or we deny our very selves. Nurture the Mother as she nurtures us.”
– Prof. Michael J. Cohen, Ecopsychologist
“It is the responsibility of each human being today to choose between the force of darkness and the force of light. We must therefore transform our attitudes, and adopt a renewed respect for the superior laws of Divine Nature.”
– Maurice Strong, first Secretary General of UNEP
“The spirit of our planet is stirring! The Consciousness of Goddess Earth is now rising against all odds, in spite of millennia of suppression, repression and oppression inflicted on Her by a hubristic and misguided humanity. The Earth is a living entity, a biological organism with psychic and spiritual dimensions. With the expansion of the patriarchal religions that focused on a male God majestically stationed in Heaven ruling over the Earth and the Universe, the memory of our planet’s innate Divinity was repressed and banished into the collective unconscious of humanity.”
– Envision Earth
“Still more important is the implication that the evolution of homo sapiens, with his technological inventiveness and his increasingly subtle communications network, has vastly increased Gaia’s range of perception. She is now through us awake and aware of herself. She has seen the reflection of her fair face through the eyes of astronauts and the television cameras of orbiting spacecraft. Our sensations of wonder and pleasure, our capacity for conscious thought and speculation, our restless curiosity and drive are hers to share. This new interrelationship of Gaia with man is by no means fully established; we are not yet a truly collective species, corralled and tamed as an integral part of the biosphere, as we are as individual creatures. It may be that the destiny of mankind is to become tamed, so that the fierce, destructive, and greedy forces of tribalism and nationalism are fused into a compulsive urge to belong to the commonwealth of all creatures which constitutes Gaia.”
– Sir James Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look At Life
“Little by little a planetary prayer book is thus being composed by an increasingly united humanity seeking its oneness. Once again, but this time on a universal scale, humankind is seeking no less than its reunion with ‘divine,’ its transcendence into higher forms of life. Hindus call our earth Brahma, or God, for they rightly see no difference between our earth and the divine. This ancient simple truth is slowly dawning again upon humanity, as we are about to enter our cosmic age and become what we were always meant to be: the planet of god.”
– Robert Muller, UN Assistant Secretary General
“What if Mary is another name for Gaia? Then her capacity for virgin birth is no miracle . . . it is a role of Gaia since life began . . . She is of this Universe and, conceivably, a part of God. On Earth, she is the source of life everlasting and is alive now; she gave birth to humankind and we are part of her.”
– Sir James Lovelock, Ages of Gaia
“Nature is my god. To me, nature is sacred; trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals.”
– Mikhail Gorbachev, Green Cross International
“The spiritual sense of our place in nature…can be traced to the origins of human civilization…. The last vestige of organized goddess worship was eliminated by Christianity.”
– Al Gore, Earth in the Balance
“Christianity is our foe. If animal rights is to succeed, we must destroy the Judeo-Christian Religious tradition.”
– Peter Singer, founder of Animal Rights
“I pledge allegiance to the Earth and all its sacred parts. Its water, land and living things and all its human hearts.”
– Global Education Associates, The Earth Pledge
“By fostering a deep sense of connection to others and to the earth in all its dimensions, holistic education encourages a sense of responsibility to self to others and to the planet.”
– Global Alliance for Transforming Education
“The earth is not dead matter. She is alive.
Now begin to speak to the earth as you walk.
You can speak out loud, or just talk to her in your mind.
Send your love into her with your exhalation. Feel your
heart touching upon the heart of the planet. Say to her
whatever words come to you: Mother Earth, I love you.
Mother Earth, I bless you. May you be healed. May all
your creatures be happy. Peace to you, Mother Earth.
On behalf of the human race, I ask forgiveness
for having injured you. Forgive us, Mother Earth”
– US Student Textbook, “Prayer to the Earth”
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.”
– Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation, the organization responsible for establishing the IPCC to handle Global Warming issues delegated to it by certain leadership figures in the WMO
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony…climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
– Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment, and responsible for Canada’s contributions to the IPCC
“The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.”
– emeritus professor Daniel Botkin
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsiblity to bring that about?”
– Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme
“Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable.”
– Maurice Strong, Rio Earth Summit
The best ‘too much of you’ quote:
“One America burdens the earth much more than twenty Bangladeshes. This is a terrible thing to say. In order to stabilize world population,we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it’s just as bad not to say it.”
– Jacques Cousteau, UNESCO Courier
The best hypocritical quote:
“We require a central organizing principle – one agreed to voluntarily. Minor shifts in policy, moderate improvement in laws and regulations, rhetoric offered in lieu of genuine change – these are all forms of appeasement, designed to satisfy the public’s desire to believe that sacrifice, struggle and a wrenching transformation of society will not be necessary.”
– Al Gore, Earth in the Balance
Apologies for any quote in double. Please spread.
Bye,
TMTisFree
Insane !! But I think here, in France, it is worth ! A skeptic is a negationist (like for WW2 and the Holocaust). There is absolutely no debate, only insults : they hold us in contempt…
Copernicus
Galileo
Today, a new realm of skeptics who go against the ‘consensus’.
I am proud to be one of them.
Two rather appropriate quotes lifted directly from the home-page of http://www.grumpyoldsod.com/index.asp
We might mock now, but this demonising of the ‘Deniers’ is a most frightening development.
When government doesn’t agree with the people,
it’s time to change the people – Bertolt Brecht
The best way to take control over a people and control them
utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode
rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible
reductions. In this way the people will not see those rights
and freedoms being removed until past the point at which
these changes cannot be reversed – Adolf Hitler
A Primer In Social Engineering (SE)
Axiom: “Deniers” stepped in in SE trap.
Quotes from here:
– Mike Bryant (22:08:53) : Much thought and planning has gone into the particular strategy above. These people know what they are doing.
– Roger Knights (23:07:04) : Deniers are not just mad but bad: “people literally suppressing truth.”
1) To change reality, one has to change expressions (via Orwell)
a) there is “pro choice” but it should be “pro murder” or “against life”
b) there is “denier” but it should be “opponent”
c) there is “hate crime” but it should be “contradictory opinion”
d) etc
2) the best weapon fighting opponents is naming them with negtive expression
a) “mental disorder” versus “common sense”
b) “denier” versus “opponent/proponent” (depending on the side)
But the worst thing which I think is happening in different kinds of societies is that the “truth” side has started to use the twisted language of the “evil side” many years ago. And the strategy was proved beyond doubt. Specialy in political matters.
Why Mr Brendan O’Neill didn’t set up a Facebook group called ‘Climate warming (or AGW warming) is a mental disorder’? Why didn’t he accepted “our” views as a base?
And the whole lot of other similar actions are the ultimate proof that “we” jump into the trap I have written at the beginning of my comment.
And If we continue using “their” language, our (pardon “yours”) efforts will bring only minimal effect on society as a whole.
Regards
“ Psychologising dissent, and refusing to recognise, much less engage with, the substance of people’s disagreements – their political objections, their rational criticisms, their desire to do things differently – is the hallmark of authoritarian regimes“.
This is true but it’s also the brand of a failure. 😉
Well I’ve always known I had a few screws loose.
This kind of low level of desparate, childish name-calling says a lot about AGW science and the integrity of the people behind it.
Any serious scientist ought to be ashamed of being associated with these sophomores. I predict mass defections to the sceptic side in the coming months.
P Folkens (23:47:20) :
“Years ago, I attended my brother’s wedding in the deepest part of the Southern Bible Belt. One lady from the bride’s side made conversation by asking what I did. I told her I worked in the field of evolutionary biology. She said she’d pray for me.
AGW alarmists are kind of like that except they won’t pray for me, but rather relegate me to the hinterlands of social banishment.
AGW alarmists and Creationists do share something in common. It matters not a wit the good, empirical data and scientific analysis one presents. Facts that demolish their illusions mean only that I am a bad person for questioning their “truth.” Deep down, they really hate me for it.
How can we overcome this growing level of stupid around us?”
F. Folkens,
I think you make a wrong assessment of the situation.
These kind of publications show the true face of the Green (read RED) eco-socialists.
At the same time it shows how desperate they are.
People are not stupid.
Opposition is growing world wide.
As long as we keep a cool head and sound science, we will do well.
Eventually I think we can not escape from active involvement in the political process because in Europe and the USA there is no political party that represents our view.
As Josef Goebels said “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will assume it is the truth”, or words to that effect (obviously Goebel’s spoke in German).
As Edmund Burke said “If good men do nothing, evil triumphs”
If this post is where the debate is headed then it is worth remembering this.
Somehow I doubt that Steve Moore will be wagging his finger at these folks for their ad hom.
this is scary. Voltaire said: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
So we are “sick”, its only a short step to forcing treatment upon us for the sake of society.
Reading through the threads above, I come away with the notion that AGW is a desperate clamor to be on the side that is saving Earth, as a cause to ease the mind over the overpopulation of Earth. It is soothing to them, and they cling to it with religious fervor. Who wants to be on the side that is left out?
The planet grows small, the resources are strained. The latter condition has repeatedly caught up with civilizations in one way or another.
So, the religion is this: We have the science that will save us (the true believers, not the Earth).
The fear of the AGW’er is that the masses will react in herd fashion and overwhelm them as they face extinction.
That fear in not unfounded.
For too long modern science has held at bay the twin forces of disease and overpopulation. That relationship is strained, and hence the desperation.
Denial does very strange things to those who cannot face reality.
Playing with Stem Cells, maybe they will break the hold of disease, but at what cost?
Playing with genetics, they have broken the hold of food resources, but only delayed the inevitable.
Playing with the Earth’s atmosphere, they may break the perceived threat of Global Warming, but the cost may be to the cradle of life itself.
Has science reached the limits of it’s ability to preserve mankind ad infinitum?
It has certainly found the Earth’s limit.
I see this as a frightening escalation of the AGW ideology.
It is another step in the conditioning of it’s believers to take a more and more extreme position.
The AGW ideology already seems to have it’s sycophants close to the seat of American power and when there is any close association with powerful elements in any current power base a considerable level of camouflage and protection is available to the upper level leaders of the ideology and is usually sought and used until ultimate power is fully acquired.
The usual path, the conditioning of the outer circle of believers, in this sought for escalation of power of an ideologically based, non-tolerant doctrine is being followed.
The branding of dissidents ie; skeptics, as heretics and mentally unstable is under way as a means of emphasising the inherent superiority of the believers and the unfitness of the heretics to govern or have any influence in the power structure.
The next step in the road to power is already under way.
We are now starting to see an increase in demonstrations against power plants and similar carbon based industrial users.
The following step will be demonstrations, often violent, against organisations, individuals and businesses.
There will be many side steps in this period such as legal challenges and bureaucratic based disruptions to carbon reliant industries.
The next step in this conditioning process, the radical step that takes an ideology over a psychological threshold is the assassination of a high profile and prominent skeptic.
This releases the inhibitions against killing for the cause and the conditioning of individuals and groups for more and more radical actions becomes easier.
Outlier groups such as prominent dissidents [ skeptics! ] and gatherings of dissidents become legitimate targets in the psychology of the ideologists and they are then free to use whatever force is necessary to rid the [ insert appropriate icon here. ie. race, nation, planet ] of the evil embodied in that person, group or organisation.
The demands for the level of belief becomes higher and higher and doubters are outed and then destroyed until the ideology starts to consume it’s own.
Selective terror against individuals and state organisations has and is being used today somewhere in the world as the path to ultimate power by power seeking, ideologically based totalitarian orientated groups and even governments to destroy those who dissent from it’s ideology.
It is a very slippery moral and ethical downward slope that the ideologically based AGW movement is starting on, a slope than can only lead to a disaster of an unknown magnitude to mankind if allowed to continue.
It is also the path that nearly every one of the most inhumane ideologically based totalitarian regimes of the last 150 years has followed.
There is an old saying; Evil prevails when good men do nothing.
Along these lines, I have a piece up at Pajamas Media today — note my name dropping of a familar fellow in the second-to-last paragraph:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-incurious-case-of-the-carbon-alarmists/
Best,
David
I draw serious distinction between science as a means to obtain knowledge and science used as a means to control the forces of nature.
The former is benign, the latter is where it gets dicey.
One pandorra’s box of nuclear power was opened.
It is barely under control, but not by much.
How many more dare we open?
Want to control the weather?
Want to control death?
Want to control genetics?
Curiousity is insatiable, and there are boxes that some wish to open.
One padorra’s box is plenty.
AGW take warning: Leave the Earth’s atmosphere alone.
Is this really just admission that, although they own the mainstream media and that the masses only hear their message, they masses aren’t as stupid as they think?
Most people in the UK are more worried about whether they’ll have a job and food on the table in a month’s time than about what may happen in 50, 100 years time. There’s your psychology: food, cave, warmth, safety, now.
I was blind, but now I see. It really isn’t my fault. I have a disease. I’m addicted to rational thought. I think the first of my twelve steps to recovery will be to put away my thermometer. When I’m better, I’m hopeful I’ll be able to be around thermometers without yielding to my compulsion to actually read the vile things.
P Folkens (23:47:20) :” AGW alarmists and Creationists do share something in common.”
Apart from the tautology in your sentence I agree with the analogy. Yet, most Creationists are climate sceptics, not because of in depth knowledge or a sceptical mind-set (far from that) but more for political reasons.
‘Our judgements judge us, and nothing reveals us, exposes our weaknesses, more ingeniously than the attitude of pronouncing on our fellows’ Paul Valery
I am shocked to see this is being held here in England, only 50 miles away. ‘Only in America’, I thought, before clocking the location. I would go but I may display signs of anger and paranoia, to add to my mentally imbalanced state of denial and non-conformism.
Robert Bateman (02:26:09) :
“I draw serious distinction between science as a means to obtain knowledge and science used as a means to control the forces of nature.
The former is benign, the latter is where it gets dicey.
One pandorra’s box of nuclear power was opened.
It is barely under control, but not by much.
How many more dare we open?
Want to control the weather?
Want to control death?
Want to control genetics?
Curiousity is insatiable, and there are boxes that some wish to open.
One padorra’s box is plenty.
AGW take warning: Leave the Earth’s atmosphere alone.”
Robert,
Don’t worry, we are already looking for another planet.
Great. I shall wear my Mental Denialist badge with pride
Halfwise (21:14:21) :
“Well, since the idea of spending real money on a symbolic gesture towards a non-existent problem makes me crazy, they are probably right.”
Excellent comment.
Really though, it’s not our fault – it’s a serious disability, probably worthy of generous state-sponsored compensation.
This debilitating condition of ours demands a label:
Is it a Phobia, as in BSophobia?
A Mania, as in Mannomania?
A Syndrome perhaps, as in Skeptics Syndrome?
Or a Disorder, as in Denialist Disorder?
Maybe it is time we fought back, with pet names for our opponents.
Those who obsess about catastrophic global warming, when Earth has been cooling for the past decade or so, are Climate Dyslexics.
Any more submissions for Slander of the Week?
Prizes will be given – a bacon sandwich for the best entry.
Why do I have the feeling I’m going to hear the clang of Death Camp gates as they close behind me?
Michael Crichton said he was worried that there was a totalitarian gene waiting to be activated in many humans and it just takes the right memes and circumstances to coalesce to activate the totalitarian streak in people. Communism failed, Malthusian predictions failed, religion trying to drill shame into people failed. Now they have returned under the umbrella of environmental activism to try to do again what they failed at before, except now they have three weapons they did not before.
The first is big money. They now know how to monetise their agenda.
The second is disinformation. By spreading unfounded fears about the future, of scientific treatments, and of industrialism in general, they exploit the curiosity and fears of people who do not know any better. These poor victims are what Michael Crichton called ‘information invalids’. They have become mentally crippled by bad information.
The third weapon is taking advantage of what Richard Dawkin’s called a relativistic society. In this politically correct culture nobody is right or wrong. Creationism is right, evolution is right. Democracy is right, totalitarianism is right too. Every belief and idea has to be tolerated and respected because everyone is equal and also equally exploitable.
By taking advantage of a society that lacks vision and a quest for truth alone, environmental activists are able to to get away with spreading disinformation in the name of social justice, saving the children of the future and saving the planet. Because we live in a tolerant society with respect for diverse opinions and cultures, we must tolerate environmental activists even when they call us Holocaust deniers, criminals and mentally ill. We must also tolerate their carbon taxation, their desire to control every aspect of our lives, and even our imprisonment for being climate criminals if they deem us to be one.
That is the way totalitarian returns. What will you do to stop it?
Mike Bryant states that ‘the science is settled’. The scientific method requires that in order to establish a scientific fact the hypothesis must be validated and verified. AGW science has not been able to do this. The outputs of the IPPCC models are not facts but predictions.
Many current global observations and measurements (temperatures, sea levels etc.) conflict with these predictions.
Scientific facts are incontrovertible and unaffected by abuse, no matter how loud or prolonged.
Roger Sowell (00:28:17) – To the beach, Roger. To the beach!
Stephen Brown (01:18:28) :
“Two rather appropriate quotes lifted directly from the home-page of http://www.grumpyoldsod.com/index.asp”
Thanks for the link, very funny.
tmtisfree (00:50:58) :
pft (21:43:01) :
Great lists of quotes. A few more:
The desire to save mankind is always a false front for the desire to rule it.
(H.L. Mencken)
To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good…
Ideology – that is what gives evil doing its long-sought justification and gives the evil-doer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honours.
(Alexander Solzhenitsyn)
Their needs to be a blood sacrifice.
(Tony Blair, ex PM of Britain. He let that one slip in a news interview; wonder what he meant? It was never repeated.)
@ pft and @tmtisree
Sorry,
Daniel Botkin should not be quoted as a deep ecologist. He is rather a skeptic.
He was just quoting somebody’s else citation. He is not the author.
Regardless of original intention, the climate change is a political movement based on the usual power, money and control. AGW is as good a name as any for it. The technique that’s used has been refined to what you see today to the point where it’s sometimes difficult to truly separate the politicians from the believers from scientists hitching along for the ride.
The politicians are very easy to identify and include most of UN folks at IPCC along with Al Gore, Mikhail Gorbachev, various members of Congress and, evidently, Barack Obama and his administration. A favorite technique of the group is serial demonization of their opponents. It serves three primary purposes: (1) to discredit the opponents, (2) force the opponent to spend resources defending the attack and (3) diverts public attention from the facts of the issue(s). It does work especially if the media decides to jump on board and amplifies it along with including the “prove to us you are not …. and not just some nut” interview.
What’s interesting about the “denier” attack is how persistent it has become in the overall AGW movement. It won’t make much difference if there is actual science regarding denier psych. For example, studying why some persist against strong “consensus” and draw correlations regarding ultimate proof of the position – i.e., moving from “consensus” to “scientific fact.” Regardless, the “denier” and the “consensus” are clearly part of the main political talking points you will hear to prepare for the passage of AGW laws and regulations.
All in all, the public seems to be doing what juries usually do when “experts” present completely opposite conclusions – they ignore the experts and decide the case on other issues unless the science is just overwhelming (like an expert testifying that gravity really doesn’t work on top of the Empire State Building).
In short, I don’t think the public has bought into the “denier” hypothesis given the polling numbers. Once that point is reached in the public mind it won’t make much difference what another conference presents. The majority of the public, even in the UK, questions AGW’s science. Name-calling by the AGW crowd at this point will have little effect other than the “deniers” spending a lot of time talking about not being a “denier”.
I’ll go and see a doctor on monday, I’m sure our health insurance system will pay for the therapy. A complicating factor is that I live at this latitude, 59°13’16.06″N, but a long stay at a sunny and warm location, the Maldives for example, might help me. Wish me good luck!
You ask “What will they think of next?” See Greenie Watch. (You can google.)
It appears that snails, slugs and worms are emitting dangerous greenhouse gases!
Robert Bateman (02:26:09) : “I draw serious distinction between science as a means to obtain knowledge and science used as a means to control the forces of nature.”
Sure science is a means to obtain knowledge. But knowledge in itself would only satisfy our curiosity. Applying the knowledge is really what in most cases drives science. Applying it in a way that would ultimately benefit mankind, even if that would interfere with the forces of nature.
Nature per se is not sacred. Forces of nature could, for instance, impoverish our atmosphere of CO2 making life as we know it difficult to sustain. Imagine if the burning of fossil fuels could save our planet from too low levels of atmospheric CO2? Wouldn’t we have the right to interfere with nature for the benefit of our biosphere?
The idea that everything that is natural is by definition good is a fallacy on which the green movement is founded. Stem cell research and genetic engineering of food may save millions of people from disease or famine, yet , it does interfere with natural processes.
Yes, and if we could control the weather (which we can’t, I’m afraid) to delay the coming of a next ice age then I would be all for it. Wouldn’t you?
Do I have a mental disorder, or a lack of one? I would have thought credulity (the willingness to believe anything, on authority) a mental disorder in this context. For the record, I don’t use an internal combustion engine (I do drive, but don’t own a car, I cycle to work), or heat my apartment with oil, or cook with gas. I’m not a huge consumer of anything (except cheesecake).
It seems to me that the mental disorder in question should be mass hysteria, not scepticism.
The ‘mental disorder’ is spreading. This is a link to a podcast from the financial sense newshour for 7 March. It’s normally about the markets but climate change are discussed. The talk about the PDO, AMO and US droughts starts about 30 minutes in:
http://www.netcastdaily.com/broadcast/fsn2009-0307-3a.asx
Or you will find the link from this page. It’s the second part of 3rd Hour with Jim & John for 7 March
http://www.financialsense.com/fsn/main.html
Please help me!
I suffer from an very severe mental illness, I don’t believe what the newspaper say! I don’t even believe Al Gore! And the worst is:
It’s March, I live in the lowlands of Switzerland, there is full Global Warming……….and if I look out of the window, I see snow in the garden!!
My brain is playing very bad tricks on me!
Gore’s Law -” What ever I say is right, whatever I do is right. Whatever you say or do against me is wrong.”
Peer reviewed by Hansen, Moore and Gore!
Cargo cult science is what I think the late great Nobel prize winning physicist Richard P. Feynman would have called the whole of the AGW cult. He had a talk with this title at his 1974 Caltech commencement address. The whole text is here
Some choice quotes:
or this bit
or this bit about honesty to other scientist and laymen
Mike McMillan (22:35:21) :
“If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.”
– Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, patron of the World Wildlife Fund
I though he was happy with being born a leech.
Oops! The first link I posted above is part 1. You want part 2 for the interview with Evelyn Browning Garriss about climate change. Her father is a ‘foremost climatologist’. recommended.
http://www.netcastdaily.com/broadcast/fsn2009-0307-3b.asx
Perhaps we should come up with a button or some other visible marker that would allow us climate skeptics – which I loosely define as those who do not believe there is sufficient data to support the notion of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming – to identify ourselves to each other. In large measure the big lie is that only a few wild eyed, fossil fuel fuelled, knuckle dragging, sheet wearing, know nothing, crazies are skeptics. I suspect that there are many of us out here.
Bernie said: “Perhaps we should come up with a button or some other visible marker that would allow us climate skeptics – which I loosely define as those who do not believe there is sufficient data to support the notion of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming – to identify ourselves to each other. ”
No, we’ll leave images of the Holocaust for the Alarmists to exploit as they always do. We do not do such things, because we are NOT mentally ill.
Eco-psychology ????
I usually take great joy in reading the posts here, and especially the comments. So many of you provide entertainment and insight among the varying points of view. It’s both my morning and evening entertainment. This one I’m taking a pass on though, because much like elections, it really makes me terribly disappointed in my fellow citizens. That so many can be manipulated by so few so easily is a testament to the mental laziness that has been developed, encouraged, and perpetuated for some time now.
As a friend of mine quoted some time ago…”Since we discovered fire…this is as far as we’ve come?”
See y’all on the next post, which I see is already up! 🙂
JimB
Yes, I admit it, I am pathologically opposed to poverty and death.
Are there twelve steps to salvation?
1. Accept Al Gore into your heart and mind
2. Accept David Suzuki into your beer fridge
3. Accept Ontario Green Police into your home.
4. Walk, don’t run as that produces more CO2.
5. Don’t breed
6. Freeze in the dark.
7. Grovel before enviro-priests
9. Fly around the world to exotic locales.
10. Deny deniers
11. Sport Jim Hansenn lapel badges
12. Throw up
The general nastiness of the environmentalists shows their true nature, in my opinion. Misanthropy is the new racism. Just insert ‘brown’ in front of the ‘people’ word in some of those quotes above. That, I suspect, is what their subconscious is really babbling about. Nasty, nasty people.
Maybe this means they’ll let us off with “diminished capacity” or something at Hansen’s Nuremberg-style trials. Whew!
I find it interesting that skeptics have a psychosis but it’s the believers that seem to dress up in funny costumes, shout slogans, threaten people with violence, become incoherent with rage, and will not look at any data that does not support their position. Seems like a good set of symptoms for diagnosing a mental disorder.
This quote caught my eye:
“Thus the Ecologist says ‘denial cannot simply be countered with information’; indeed there is apparently ‘plentiful historical evidence that increased information may even intensify denial’ (9).”
Wow. By their own admission, Belief in AGW/CC is anti-knowledge, and anti-science, since the more you learn, the less you Believe.
They seem incredulous, and enraged about the fact that there are increasingly more of what they disparagingly call “denialists”, but which are actually climate realists. This denialism-as-sickness idea is just one more weapon leveled at us, and anyone who dares to refuse to go along with that agenda. Instead of being a search for truth, and a wish to “understand”, however, it is in fact just another in their long line of assaults on reason. Yes, it is a measure of their desperation, but it will have an effect. It is just one more of their insidious ways of shutting down debate.
Orwell was indeed prescient, just off by about a quarter century.
The AGW debate: Two tribes of monkees throwing sh*t at each other while each proclaiming themselves to the annointed apostles of “true science”.
This may be one of the funniest threads on WUWT yet.
Burt van Deenan,
What a contrast to the scientists of today…
I seems that the collective unconscious (to use Jung terminilogy) has always needed an “end of the world” fear.. Judgement day followed by the world wars and finally the threat of a nuclear war between USA and USSR. I have not the time or resources to check but I suspect that when communism collapsed a new “judgement day” was required and global warming and eco-disaster theory and activism rapidly took off from then.
I have recently heard about a new, even deadlier type of denialism. It seems that there are some people who believe that it is a bad idea to bail out our free spending government with money that our grandchildren have not even earned yet. These people are threatening the continued spending on such ptaiseworthy projects as:
1) Finding out why pigs stink-(I’m not making this up)
2) Bailing out profligate companies, states, cities and the federal government.
3) Giving even more money to people who never intented to pay mortgages.
4) Giving billions more to right-thinking scientists
5) Doing all this with an IOU
I know that it is hard to believe that some people think this is a bad idea, but believe me, these crazy people are out there in incredible numbers. These deniers must be shown the “New Common Sense” and shown quickly. Government health care must start NOW to treat these millions upon millions of deluded people, NO MATTER WHAT IT COSTS
pft,
Thanks for the quotes — I copied them.
Stifling dissent and free speech will cause catastrophes worse than the worst AGW predictions — as the global experiment with democracy is ultimately destroyed. Oh yes, I remember now — “it can’t happen here”.
I am both proud and dismayed to report that my friends and colleagues in Texas saw this coming almost a year ago.
Every gun shop within 50 miles has been stripped-clean of semiautomatic weapons. Ammo sales are up over 50%. Every time there’s another wacky leftist pronouncement (like this one), there’s yet another flurry of activity. E-mails fly, guns get bought, folks get even more edgy. Nobody’s getting a “carry permit” or joining the NRA, as those activities “put your name on a list.”
There are likely more AR-15s (the civilian M-16) in my county that in the entire country of Mexico. And that doesn’t count the AKs.
When I asked an old Texan why everyone was over-reacting, he referred me to the flag that the Texicans carried at the Battle of San Jacinto; in the middle is the silhouette of the small cannon that the Texicans “liberated” from a Mexican armory. Around the cannon it says in big letters “COME AND TAKE IT”.
He said that all the talk was fine, folks had a right to be as stupid as they wanted. However, he said, “just don’t cross that threshold.”
To paraphrase Rick Blaine (Bogey) in Casablanca, “Mr. President, there are parts of this country I wouldn’t advise you to invade.”
Well, I don’t agree that environmentalists are all elitist, authoritarian, snooty school marms. It does, however, have a religious element that attracts people like that, and they are out in force on the AGW debate. I prefer to keep to the science and let the political ranters have their own space.
Nevertheless, in a lengthy debate over AGW on another blog, I found myself tagged as a victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect] AMAZING. The fact that I disagreed meant that I was not competent to understand the issue. The Inquisition would have been amused!
Skepticism is just a personality trait that requires more proof of a proposal before it is considered fact. The antonym of skeptical is gullible. Gullible people are more trusting and accept proposals as fact readily.
Consider a bell curve of all people with the leftmost low end of the chart representing gullible people who believe those e-mails from Nigeria, and on the rightmost low end the most skeptical who when hearing that their mother loves them, check out the story. Of course the high end of the bell represents most of the population who need some proof of a new idea but are still somewhat trusting.
Keeping in mind that skepticism is a requirement of critical thinking, mark on the chart the creative people who have invented and built the technology that we rely on today.
I’m proud to be on the right side of that bell curve.
I regard the dismissal of “climate deniers” as a form of racism. Milgram showed that those most likely to totally abuse human rights could well be mild, gentle, want-to-be-liked people – when told what to do by some kind of “authority”. I know the truth of this from personal experience quite apart from climate skeptics. But at the same time, I’m aware of the capacity of human beings to do good as well as bad, and I always want to hold up for the highest potential, without being blind.
We may have tough years ahead, as growing population, and diminishing non-renewable resources, eventually affect us, even though Ehrlich was badly wrong regarding numbers and dates,and I don’t like his attitudes either. But just as rats go crazy with “overpopulation” at a certain point, we may have to look at the same driving forces in our collective unconscious. Yet we are not animal but human, and we also have abilities to invent, create, improve, discover, reorientate, and seek integrity. We owe so much to the power of plentiful energy and technology – but see how dependent we have become. Clearly there are takeover bids for the planet, in the name of environmentalism, that seem to harness good reasons in the service of extremely dubious reasons. But there are also good people everywhere. And there is Great Spirit who can bring miracles to help situations of distress, to those who ask for help. I’m not a creationist or evolutionist because I find elements of truth in all points of view. Today’s urban population have largely lost connection with the seasons, the roots of sustainability, and the sense of wholeness taught by the best Native American wisdom. People try to recapture that lost sense by fair means and foul.
Nothing is as simple as it seems.
However, it is interesting that Big God in the Sky who Sent You to Hell if you did not Believe his Priests, has had a makeover.
We are seeing the end game of big government.
The only question is whether their final thrashing about in all directions will take us all down with them for a short time or for a long time.
The biggest risk is the type of people who get elected out of desperation in the minds of the electorate.
It’s weird to hear so many bleating about the evils of globalisation when they really only mean free market entities with global interests.
There seems to be no problem with globalisation if it is in the hands of an overweening global governmental organisation.
All our current problems arise from the attempts of past and present governments and intergovernmental organisations to themselves become global players and, in the course of those attempts, corrupting and abusing several hundred years of checks and balances that enabled the free markets to prosper for the benefit of people worldwide.
It is those who have destroyed the global economy who think that more of the same is the proper solution and while they are about it they pretend they can control climate as a cover for their dash for undemocratic power.
This is nothing to do with left and right. Stalin and Hitler were supposedly left and right respectively but shared strategies and governing styles.
It is a matter of authoritarianism or freedom for the entire globe.
The Chicken Little Complex
Your task, should you be courageous enough to accept it, is to document and evaluate the causes and consequences of global warming activists embracing global warming models without statistical validation.
This climactic phobia is driving these global warming activists to prohibit use of stored solar energy (coal and oil) without providing alternative transport fuels or reliable electrical energy. Such efforts are projected to divert $45,000,000,000 away from productive efficient use into higher cost less efficient systems controlled by central governments.
The unimpeded consequences of such actions are likely to cause catastrophic reductions in global economies resulting in hundreds of millions of deaths by famine from irrational political action induced by fear.
By the way, the Siberia of the US will be Wallowa County in Oregon. Which works great for me. I already live there AND I have a sign on my door that says, “Welcome to the Nut House”.
One more thing. I hate being painted as a conservative, just because I question the underlying science of AGW, as much as I hate being painted as a religious neanderthal. I also hate the constant drumbeat of the “left”. I am a democrat. A democrat has as much brain matter as a conservative. Our labels are not capable of being descriptive. They are used by people who think in stereotypes instead of doing the work of reasoned examination. We can all think for ourselves and take it upon ourselves to question mainstream ANYTHING! Our political labels don’t describe us. So don’t paint me this color or that.
Rant off
Suggesting sending people to re-education ‘camps’ for being a ‘denialist’? Good grief, that concept is so old fashioned, as well as being very poor English.
Paranoia of the nature exhibited and the neoligisms emanating from some members of the ‘eco’ faction could possibly be construed as evidence of schizophrenia. People should be very careful before slinging accusations of ‘denialism’ being a form of mental illness. That metaphorical sword has two edges.
Meanwhile Lake Superior is freezing over. Evidence of predicted warming effects failing to appear as previously announced. Noooo! I’m innocent I tell you!
Anthony.
I wish you would not grant them the semblance of sensicality by using their terminology.
Why not title your article something akin “Conference labels proponent of proper data analysis and scientific integrity as having mental disorder”
This is truly what is at the core of the debate; twisting science, the destruction of knowledge, for favoring their little for-personal-profit ideas.
Bruce Cobb (05:52:22) :
Orwell was indeed prescient, just off by about a quarter century.
In fact he was spot on. In 1984 Margaret Thatcher had parliament pass the ‘Public Order Act’ and centralised the police force in the UK. In it’s provisions were included the powers to end the right to free assembly.
The act was used against striking coalminers and the new agers at Stonehenge by cadres of army personnel dressed in black police boiler suits carrying riot batons and shields.
For an encore, she cooked up the co2 warming agenda to undermine the coal miners and push the nuclear and gas industries in which her supporters had invested. – Sound familiar?
She was the leader of the ‘right wing’. This is not a right-left confrontation, do not be fooled by obsolete political categories. As the band Gong put it back in 1971:
They talk about the right wing
They talk about the left wing
For me and you it’s getting pretty frightening
All I can say is “Wow!”
If that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black, then I don’t know what is!
Ayn Rand tried to warn us that there would be people like this….
Correction: That should read Trillion $:
“Such efforts are projected to divert $45,000,000,000,000 away from productive efficient use into higher cost less efficient systems controlled by central governments.”
See: International Energy Agency projects $45 trillion
The problem with this whole issue is that you have two sides who each have ulterior motives – the same one actually. The acquisition and maintenance of power.
The ‘greens’ were all untrained in science or scientists living off an ever-growing gravy train.
The ‘deniers’ were initially in the oil camp, who saw a threat to their profits and power base.
The truth is this: at some stage we will need to diversify our energy supplies. Not today, not tomorrow, but within 50 years.
At the moment, we can’t replace oil in an economic way, so there is a fight going on to control the process of replacement by those who either want to maximise dividends (private interests) or taxation revenues (‘lefties’, ‘greens’).
Sooner or later the two will have to be reconciled.
But right now, what you have are two groups who use their own self-serving websites where it is easy to chide and deride the other lot.
Because it’s far too difficult to actually have to engage with the other lot and challenge all those cherished assumptions which, horror of horrors, may be wrong.
This endless PR stunt of name calling and libel of scientific dissent reminds me of the Nazis labeling of scientists who disagreed with them as Jewish Scientists, and the Soviets practice of sending thier disidents to mental hospitals. I think it was the Nazis who labeled physchology as a “Jewish Science”. It later expanded to physics where Jews played a significant role in developing quantum physics.
Today’s Alarmists find themselves in a similar position in that they cannot defend thier AGW ideas without reverting to name calling and personal attacks.
As a delusional mentally deranged skeptic and lukewarmer I have a brilliant idea that of course is a smentally deranged and delusional as I am.
Why don’t manufacturers and corporations who will be punished by Cap and Trade perform their own acts of civil disobedience and refuse to participate. The CEO’s of said companies do not have to actually be deranged themselves, they just have to be willing to go to jail.
But, really, why should civil disobedience be limited to Greenies?
Syl:
But, really, why should civil disobedience be limited to Greenies?
Indeed.
I propose a ‘fun in the sun’ day when we all head to the Capitol’s parks and gardens to splash in the fountains and swim in the ornamental lakes in flagrant violation of ‘Da Roolz’ 🙂
Followed by a punks picnic involving the consumption of beer in public and even (horror of horrors) the smokig of cigars and cigarettes.
If you don’t take your liberty, they will.
Growing up in the 50’s I remember the bad ‘ol Soviet Union. Stories abounded about mental hospitals that served those that dared to disagree with the state approved political orthodoxy. No sane person would question such authority!
A couple of days ago I had to go to the U of W Medical Center. In the waiting area there was a consciousness magazine that I likened to a lint ball of various causes and therapies all thrown into the blender of those pages. It involved yoga, green living, vegan, crystal therapy, and global warming. I had to pinch myself that I was truly at a scientific medical center. The experience would have been complete if Dr. Steig had walked through the door.
Stephen Wilde (07:00:56)
“This is nothing to do with left and right. Stalin and Hitler were supposedly left and right respectively but shared strategies and governing styles.”
Hitler’s National Socialist (Nazi) party was to the right of Stalin. But in the context of today’s discussion Hitler was far left.
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761560927/national_socialism.html
Recall that communist regimes use the “psych ward” to control dissidents, where they can drug them and confine them.
Steady now, the treatment for this disorder is a colder climate.
So recovery is imminent.
People! I’m shocked that no one has posted the obvious yet. Your friendly psychologists may or may not believe the hype, but they do realize the millions or billions available to them from taxpayers to study CDS (Climate Derangement Syndrome).
I can hear pens scrawling out grant request right now!
In this world we live.
We all live in a world where without demonization and labeling of enemies, the system stops. You cannot enforce and control without a common purpose so sinister as to threaten all equally. Without it people naturally move to the center on the political spectrum. Most live in the middle and simply move enough left or right to tip the balance. Nowhere is this more evident than in American politics. When things are good and there is no enemy or threat the country drifts to the middle,( some will argue this but please understand that periods of prosperity naturally do this) now when confronted with a real enemy the party in power always gains support short term especially if action is taken, thus moving people in their direction .
The opposition must then create a new or frame an existing enemy that is not being confronted and marginalize the enemy that is (the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are an example here). They then must elevate the new threats above all others. This will move the middle enough to tip the scale.
It is how party politics works including democratic parliamentary multi party systems it is then not a see-saw but a rounded bottom saucer, the only solution is for the middle to become more engaged and elect people with more moderate positions on both sides and if possible Independent candidates that can vote conscience instead of party. Unfortunately that has never happened in human history because we have a system based on the confrontational party of power or coalition of power instead a Administration made up of elected representatives based on skills.
This study is an example of the social-scientific suck-up. Sorry to all scientists that actually do real scientific research in hard sciences. The fields regarding the behavioral and psychological studies of mankind always align themselves with the political landscape because of the little or no value they supply to the civilizations in which they live relies on political funding and support. This research is used for what? To sell us a softer tissue, or create a desire for something you had no idea you needed in the first place, and to influence our voting patterns and create non-existent lines of social seperation. Nice line of work.
Jim Steele,
You may be spot-on with your assessment of the AGW believers as driven by the need to make man the center of the universe. I’ll have to think about it. My assessment of them, from a theological perspective (I am both a Christian and a scientist) is that they are manifestly evil. They are submitting to what I would call a sinful lust for power and control. All of us are prone to lust for something, even if it is only chocolate. When those with political power are consumed with lust for control of others, however, it is Evil writ large. I know many of this site are not religious; I am offering my perspective on what efforts like this truly are. I think my perspective has this value: it prevents me from “misunderestimating” the purposes and intent of these people. We can find them horrifyingly comedic, but we must not take lightly their maniacal and deliberate intention to play God to the rest of us.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
Jeff L (07:36:32) :
“All I can say is “Wow!” If that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black, then I don’t know what is!”
Perhaps this:
“Repeated use of it [skepticism] has led to mental weakness, dullness and an insanity either of a violent sort in which the victim is pursued by terrible sense-illusions, with insomnia and acute mania, or of an imbecile-lethargic kind, resulting in incurable dementia. . . . .Children of [skeptics] are said to be inferior; in some parts of India, where [denial] has long been used to excess, whole communities are imbecilic and morally degraded.” The American Scholar (Phi Beta Kappa Society) Winter 1938/39
Note: ‘skeptic/denial’ replaced ‘marijuana’ – From U.S. gov’t “Reefer Madness”
There is a pleasure sure in being mad which none but madmen know. John Dryden.
The real problems come when open dissent and civil disobedience is carried out with the support of a government rather than against it.
In effect a government making use of such support for it’s own purposes places itself above the law and before long has to take increasingly assertive steps to maintain control, often involving the suspension of the rule of law or a dilution or cessation of democratic constraints.
In that context I am concerned that some of President Obama’s representatives are involved with climate and environmental activists at a high level.
Does he know what he is doing ?
We shall see.
Bernie
“Perhaps we should come up with a button or some other visible marker that would allow us climate skeptics “
How’s about a yellow armband with “CO2” writ large?
Whatever malady the AGW skeptics have, it is slowly becoming a near epidemic as more and more Americans are catching it. They now represent a majority or 44% and their numbers are growing fast. It must be the scientific truth that is making them behave the way they do.
According to Angus Reid Global Monitor dated January 29, 2009 many people in the United States regard climate change as a real challenge, according to a poll by Rasmussen Reports. 64 per cent of respondents say global warming is very or somewhat serious.
While 41 per cent of respondents say global warming is caused mostly by human activity, 44 per cent believe it is part of long-term planetary trends.
Is global warming caused primarily by human activity or by long term planetary trends?
Jan. 2009 Dec. 2008 Apr. 2008
Human activity 41% 43% 47%
Long term planetary trends 44% 43% 34%
Some other reason 7% 6% 8%
Not sure 9% 8% 11%
Source: Rasmussen Reports
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,000 American adults, conducted on Jan. 15 and Jan. 16, 2009. Margin of error is 3 per cent.
I believe part of the problem is the increased isolation of urban populations from nature. They imagine that food comes from grocery stores, and gasoline from the gas station, and don’t see how dirty and dusty and smelly any true natural resource extraction is. Thus people say we should just stop cutting trees, as if this would have no consequences. Or try to stop all oil extraction activities, as if it was something we don’t really need. Or sue farmers for dust and smells when they build out in the country. I further note that many of those (maybe most of them) who make extreme statements like this work in jobs where you don’t have to make a profit and where tradeoffs are not obvious, such as being a college professor or artist or famous musician. They don’t see how doubling energy prices would put a business under, or that energy is even needed for things. It is the disneyfication of public sensibilities (animals are cute and talk, and dust and smells don’t exist).
Stephen Wilde: “In effect a government making use of such support for it’s own purposes places itself above the law and before long has to take increasingly assertive steps to maintain control, often involving the suspension of the rule of law or a dilution or cessation of democratic constraints.
In that context I am concerned that some of President Obama’s representatives are involved with climate and environmental activists at a high level.”
Well said. This is part of the four stages of Marxist subversion of democracy as revealed by ex-KGB defector Yuri Aleksandrovic Bezmenov. He said Marxists in elite positions would support protests and activists which appear to the public to be grassroots revolutions but are completely controlled from positions of authority.
Nearly every dictator has also manipulated sections of the public to perform popular uprisings against his detractors and competition or to help him to force an agenda on the rest of the population.
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=66245842658CE1AF
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=4CDAB99FAB5980BA
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=A6C3EE7F4E9EFB07
Let us consider one type of true believer, those who go to church because they believe (and not just because they are lonely). They will tend to think that non-believers are lost, and are sinners and feel sad for them, but do NOT think they are crazy. In the green church, the level of belief is also high, but there is a difference from religion which is based on a concept called Faith. The green church is based on Science (supposedly) which is “logical”. To fail to believe something so “logical” can only be the result of mental defect. Thus all of this follows from the simple fact of the choice of God one has. The religious God allows one to choose to believe or not (though you’ll get punished later), but if your lack of belief can only be understood as a mental disorder, well….we have treatments for that. And clearly you don’t debate with crazy people or allow them to give interviews on television. It all makes perfect sense, in a really really disturbing way.
Craig Loehle (10:26:32) :
Exactly! And there’s probably no solution, except devastatingly hard times. Maybe things will actually get bad enough that some tenured professors get laid off!
I recognized that the yellow star parallel would immediately come to mind. However, I believe there is a huge difference between those who self-identify and those who are branded. Wearing a small national flag lapel pin would work fine — if we chose to do it. The point is that one can always marginalize what is claimed to be a small group. It becomes much harder to marginalize a group that appears to be both large and normal-looking. The PR battle is a battle. SImply to get people in the media to seriously look at the data is going to take more than a a few blogs.
I am not sure about you, but I actually do not know where a significant number of my 30 or so colleagues stand on this issue. SInce I am in Massachusetts I can hazard a guess – but I certainly do not know.
Craig Lohle,
You make a point which few people bring up. The Alarmists can get away with what they do for the simple fact that many Americans haven’t a clue what is involved in sustaining our standard of living. From the supply chain manager who finds the most effiecient way to supply an industry to the trucker who drives his refrigirated rig to the local market, fossil fuels are the backbone of our nation. Just think how much oil and natural gas are burnt in San Jose just to run the thousands of server farms located there. However, the current governing body may just educate the populace yet. Between the President’s coming war on CO2 to the approaching collapse of our financial sectors, we may all get a crash course in austerity very soon. Question: how long will people in Burlington Vermont tolerate life in the winter without California grown lettuce or Florida oranges? How long could brewers in Virginia continue to sell ales without hops? (hint: 90% of the hops grown in the US come from Washington-Oregon-Idaho). How many Americans are prepared to buy $150 per month for internet access?
A year ago such talk was confined to Art Bell’s late night radio show. But a year ago the Dow sat at 11,000 and there were 5 million more people employed. The dire warnings of our anointed climate experts are becoming less and less important. Suddenly, spending trillions of dollars on yet unearned future wealth in order to achieve a quarter degree drop in global temperatures doesn’t seem like such a hot idea. Yesterday on my way home from work I passed an empty RV plant where hundreds of forelorn RV chasis sat rusting in the yards. This should bring tears of joy to the Climate Alarmists. Call me insane, but I put the 2500 workers and thier families who once worked at that RV factory before some abstract notion of climate disaster.
wow all this hysteria for only 42 members? Time to relax guys, don’t take yourself too serious…
Global warming could just have been a technical problem, but it has for many people come to signify a new moral and ethical culture, a new movement.
The basic pattern is: We freed ourselves from racism, and now we must free ourselves from environmental criminals.
People’s comments here are sometimes snipped or discouraged for describing AGW supporters as being “religious”, but bear in mind that the environmental movement is making ethical and moral demands of everyone on the planet, and ethical moral issues are essentially the domain of religion, in the sense that religion is often about teaching people how they should live their lives for the common good (with variations on this theme throughout the diverse religions of the world).
Al Gore supports this, as he openly says that global warming is an ethical and spiritual matter. Many people who are not religious, in the traditional sense of belonging to a church or mosque, nonetheless describe themselves as “spiritual”. I even see it as a option on dating websites, you can tick to describe yourself as
“spiritual but not religious”.
Spirituality —- as in, how should I live? what is of most value in life? what should my values be? what philosophy should I adhere to in life? how should I regard my fellow men and women? and how should I act? what is an ethical action? —- spirituality in that sense is at the core for people who are fervently and passionately desiring to see progress in global warming legislation, and in culture at large.
I guess that the fact that your friend simply stops talking to you, and decides that you are too unacceptable to be aquatinted with anymore, is an example of people taking the moral ethical spiritual issue of global warming to heart. You have shown yourself to be a very “bad” person. A person of very dubious moral character.
Whilst WUWT is essentially a science site, which is great because first and foremost we need to know if global warming is real or not, we will continue to run into these ethical spiritual conflicts whilst looking at AGW supporters, because that is for many people the core concern; ie. many people believe climate change because they are most concerned with the spiritual aspects, not the scientific aspects. Science be damned, if it turns out that AGW is a false theory, these people would rather keep it quiet so they can keep using AGW as a convenient means of pushing people towards that new spiritual outlook where we are all one connected and united planet. Many people desire a united world, and if AGW can serve that purpose, then why not? (The power of myth has historically united many disparate tribes in ancient times).
Anyway, there is nothing wrong with people becoming ethically and spiritually more connected to the whole world. That is a good thing in general. The problem is, most people are not genuinely able to really do that. Some estimate that 20% of Westerners are capable of holding in their hearts a united world ethical vision, and meanwhile most of the world, from Zimbabwe to North Korea to Egypt to Russia to China to Poland, most people of the world are just trying to build their own country and their own power base and their own economy and carve out their own place in the world. They are 50 years away from any sort of united world vision. Some places are barely able to function as countries, let alone as global communities.
The Greens who keep urging us to “think globally” really need to get out there and see what the globe is really like. They need to see that the vast majority of humanity does not share their ethical green vision. These climate protesters who, as in the case the other day, walk up to our politicians and throw custard in their face, these protesters seem unable to imagine that actually other people don’t see the world the way they do. OK, so the protester wants to save the world. Fine. Most of the world doesn’t want to be saved in that way. And it is a highly egocentric stance to imagine that nobody else could have any concerns that are also important. I’m going to save the world and you have to listen because I am right and my issue is bigger than anybody else’s issues and you had all better listen or you are all evil!
The peculiar thing about these commentators who write about climate change deniers, and describe them as people locked in “cultural ignorance” is that the same criticism could equally well be applied to the climate activists themselves. And yet they never seem to stop to question themselves. None of us can see our own shadows–that’s why they are called shadows, because they can’t be seen–but we can at least keep trying to question ourselves. Question, am I really right? How can I be so sure? What if other people also have something to say?
The most damning thing about the climate change movement, for me as a non-scientist, is their apparent self-assuredness. I would trust someone who spoke about problems with data, doubts, and question the whole thing. They can still in balance say that climate change is real, but at least show some open mindedness to self-questioning. “The debate is over” signaled that it most certainly was not.
Well, I’m thinking of heading for Texas, with an axe, a long rifle and a lot of ammunition.
I’m a keen reader of Spiked on Line, I dont always agree with it but it does provoke debate.
Sadly climate change is not a subject which seems capable of debate for the AGW supporters. Anyone who disagrees is either mental/ evil / or in the pocket of big business. Strangely they envoke the term ” denier” as in Holocaust denier, but actually it is they who freqently use Nazi/ Stalin ( as pointed out by Aaron) techniques to avoid any debate on the subject. What are they so frightened off?
They scream foul, that we are being misinformed , but where are we getting this from. Here in the UK the BBC / SKY sing AGW in unison and I would Image the same is true elsewhere in US & Europe.
All I ask for a a proper debate , without spin , and correct facts
From the article, “As Proctor argues, when society doesn’t know something, it’s often because special interests work hard to create confusion”
This is typical.
My English Literature student friends used to do that; deconstruct your argument and references and facts to expose your underlying greed, racism, or hypocrisy. Never mind dealing with the merits of the argument on a logical or rational basis, they could simply assume that the only reason for your “reason” was your own underlying nefarious motivation.
Racists in South Africa used to claim that they needed Apartheid for the economy to work and now you AGW skeptics say you need oil for the economy, blah blah we’ve heard that reasoning before blah blah you’re just greedy and we know it.
It is a really hard person to deal with, because they don’t feel they need to listen to anything you say. “Yeah, well, you would say that…”
Now I’m not claiming to be pure in spirit. But the problem with their argument is that they assume that they are pure in spirit—-that they are free of nefarious “special interests.”
Somehow all the AGW skepticism is due to disinformation from special interests, whilst all AGW support is from people who have no special interest….?!
Well, they certainly don’t ACT like they don’t have an interest.
“The basic pattern is: We freed ourselves from racism, and now we must free ourselves from environmental criminals.”
Calling people climate criminals for supplying you with the energy that fuels your productivity, prosperity and freedom is nothing short of disgusting vitriol. They use the best technology they can at any given moment to get that energy to you and they invest billions to make it happen. Are you jealous that they get paid well for their work? How about the millions of working class shareholders and employees who directly benefit? How about the massive taxes they pay at the pump?
Stop demonising energy and the suppliers.
Sorry Stefano, discard my previous post re: climate criminals. I had only read your first paragraph before replying and thought you were using the term that Greens and Marxists have been using to attack managers at energy utility companies.
Aron, no problem, I was talking as if I was in their voice. I agree with your comment. They don’t appreciate what they have been given. They are trying to saw off the branch which they are sitting on.
Timbrom,
Come on down. We’re gonna need all the help we can get.
Aside from the risk that cap-and-trade could devastate our economy, there are already costs being incurred from merely the fear of GW. A large percentage of articles in conservation and ecology journals is devoted to what if studies about effects of climate change. This is instead of furthering understanding of ecosystems, saving endangered species, increasing clean water, or anything useful. Resources are being diverted. Second, international aid agencies are diverting money from development into carbon sequestration and talk about sustainable development, which means I think not really allowing development to proceed far enough that the people can afford a car and TV. It is costly to take your eye off the ball.
pft–
Do you have links for those quotes? They are absolutely fantastic!
Here are a few quotes:
http://infowars.wordpress.com/2009/02/13/enviroment-eugenics-quotes/
Here’s another quote I like. I posted it on another thread:
“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Tricky to be happy if you can’t stay warm by burning stuff!
This is actually a fairly typical response. If you don’t have a logical argument, you claim your opponent in the debate is crazy. Should they present a conclusion and you ask to see the data from which that conclusion derived and the method of reaching that conclusion, you are branded as some kind of troublemaker for not simply “believing”.
I could probably produce a mathematical computer model that shows that intelligent life lives on Titan and can even estimate the population. Considering the atmosphere is some 1.5% methane, there must be intelligent life that that mostly eats beans. Considering how much methane a human would produce if given a diet of mostly beans, and considering how much methane is in the atmosphere, we can then determine how many such bean eating beings there must be in order to produce that much methane. See, simple! And I can run that model and it will show that given that many bean eaters, I will have exactly as much methane in the atmosphere as observations show … which would be much more accurate than the climate models we currently have which are not in sync with actual observed data.
The problem the “warmers” have is that they continue to adhere to “the models” which have not in a single case that I am aware of been validated with observed data.
Now you tell me who is “crazy”,
“The idea that ‘climate change denial’ is a psychological disorder…”
The press release from the University of West England doesn’t actually label climate change denial as a mental disorder, rather as a subject for discussion.
That aside, I’m confused. Just a couple of weeks ago, the thread “The madness is about to begin” contained a number of claims about the madness and insanity of AGW and AGWers.
If it’s OK to label AGWers as mad, why is it not OK to label AGW sceptics as mad?
Also, I don’t believe that this casting of people who don’t “believe in” global warming is meant so much as an insult to “skeptics” so much as it is meant as a mechanism for keeping their “believers” in the fold. It is basically saying that if you change your mind and “question the models” then you are going crazy.
I think this is so because calling people who aren’t drinking your kool-aid “crazy” is generally dismissed by those people. It doesn’t carry any weight with anyone except the “believers” who will respond with vigorous head nodding at the notion that those other people are nuts. So I believe it is more aimed at getting an affirmative reaction from fellow believers than in getting any kind of results from people on the opposite side of the debate as comments like that would likely be dismissed immediately by the other side as childish mudslinging.
I get upset when I am accused of denying climate change. Naturally we ALL (here) accept climate change.
The frustrating irony is that the warmers can’t accept that it is has always changed and always will change. THEY are the deniers. They deny the MWP. They deny there was unimaginable warming and melting when the Laurentide and Cordilleran Ice Sheets melted in a mere 90 centuries. They deny that the slight warming of the past century is rather unremarkable. They deny warmer periods clearly proven 7000 years ago.
I worry a LOT about my grandkids and their future. I worry they are being brainwashed in the school system. God forbid it will indeed take a mini ice age (at our peril) to get the attention of the masses. Right now that does seem to be the only solution to the maddness that had befallen the Earth.
These are sad times. I take solace that there are sane people and many post here. ☺
“Conference labels skeptics as having mental disorder” That’s okay- the feeling is mutual. But at least I don’t go around believing that I can control the weather.
Ye stubborn deniers remember this!:
“The dictator State has one great advantage over bourgeois reason: along with the individual it swallows up his religious forces. The State has taken the place of God; that is why, seen from this angle, the socialist dictatorships are religions and State slavery is a form of worship. But the religious function cannot be dislocated and falsified in this way without giving rise to secret doubts, which are immediately repressed so as to avoid conflict with the prevailing trend towards mass-mindedness. The result, as always in such cases, is overcompensation in the form of fanaticism, which in its turn is used as a weapon for stamping out the least flicker of opposition. Free opinion is stifled and moral decision ruthlessly suppressed, on the plea that the end justifies the means, even the vilest. The policy of the State is exalted to a creed, the leader or party boss becomes a demigod beyond good and evil, and his votaries are honored as heroes, martyrs, apostles, missionaries. There is only one truth and beside it no other. It is sacrosanct and above criticism. Anyone who thinks differently is a heretic, who, as we know from history, is threatened with all manner of unpleasant things. Only the party boss, who holds the political power in his hands, can interpret the State doctrine authentically, and he does so just as suits him.”
C.G.Jung: “The Undiscovered Self”
I find it odd that Jeremiah Wright , Obama’s former minister, is sounding like the sane person lately:
Speaking in a brief interview with The Associated Press before giving a speech at a civil rights landmark, Wright smiled at the mention of the name of the nation’s first black president.
“He’s like any other president,” Wright said. “He’s a politician and he’s got to do what politicians do.”
“Barack’s name ain’t Jesus. Barack ain’t gonna improve your child’s reading score. There are things we’ve got to do on our own,” he said.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hCbWpXDiB0qYHS35YsaG4Ar1KAmQD96OA2180
Wait a second here. The author of the blog sets up a joke blog about skeptics being nuts, then when a few fanatic AGW people join it all AGW believers are tarred with the same brush.
I’m a skeptic and really resent the AGWers denilist are flat earthers accusations, etc… But this seems to me stooping to at least their level.
Does anybody here actually believe that many? most? more that a tiny few? AGW believers think skeptics are nuts?
Kind of on this topic, I had my own musings over at WhenWeAreQueen, about the similarities between psychiatry and climate science.
After a decade spent in the company of neurologists and psychiatrists and a briefer, but equally intense inquiry into climate science, I’ve decided I can safely make this sweepingingly general analogy: climate is like the human mind. And to the extent that we can claim to know anything about either, we should make our assertions with a hefty dose of humility.
If all you data-driven, detail-oriented, anal-retentive types here can stand it, please visit. I’d love your scientists’ view of my perceptions. :+)
This topic reminds me of this segment from the Warm Words document, the product of a UK think tank friendly to the current government.
http://www.ippr.org.uk/ecomm/files/warm_words.pdf
Ultimately, positive climate behaviours need to be approached in the same way as marketeers approach acts of buying and consuming. This is the relevant context for climate change communications in the UK today – not the increasingly residual models of public service or campaigning communications. It amounts to treating climate-friendly activity as a brand that can be sold. This is, we believe, the route to mass behaviour change.
And those that cannot be suckered by such methods will be labelled using pejorative terms and described as suffering from mental disorders.
The text sample can be found on page nine of the document, plenty of other gems and insights into the organisation behind the MSM portrayal of AGW.
JohnK,
I look at the results of the joke blog more as a symptom of what’s happening to scientific debate, rather than something typical of all AGW believers.
Of course the AGW side doesn’t all think like that. But the fact that accusations of mental derangement have often been used in the past by dictators to silence their opposition gives one pause, don’t you think?
I haven’t noticed the pro-AGW side telling their more extreme brethren that they are crossing the line. Have you? Silence is often concurrence.
Craig Loehle (10:26:32) said :
I believe part of the problem is the increased isolation of urban populations from nature. They imagine that food comes from grocery stores, and gasoline from the gas station, and don’t see how dirty and dusty and smelly any true natural resource extraction is. Thus people say we should just stop cutting trees, as if this would have no consequences. Or try to stop all oil extraction activities, as if it was something we don’t really need.
YES YES YES
I have been in oil & gas for almost 30 years (just got my 16th U S Patent, so I am only middling-creative in this field), and EVERY year for the last 30, woosie urbanites on both left and right coasts have excoriated me and my colleagues as cirminals, nazis, and worse. NOBODY I mean NOBODY bothers to learn the truth about this business. Not doctors, not lawyers, not indian chiefs, NOBODY.
Here are the QUICK facts: in the last decade, the US oil & gas industry has, mostly through 2 relatively new techniques (horizontal drilling and staged fracturing) figured-out how to unlock natural gas from “tight shales” which are ABUNDANT in this country. Please Google “tight shales” or “Barnett shale” or “Haynesville shale” or even “Marcellus shale”. We won’t mention the Bakken shale, as it is largely an oil province, and mostly because I’m never sure how to spell it.
Ironically this set of techniques has brought so much nat gas to market so quickly that the price has PLUMMETED; enough that it’s generally not economical to bring LNG tankers to the US (unless it’s otherwise “stranded gas” like from Trinidad).
You want to know the secret to (a) reducing carbon emissions (b) reducing foreign oil imports (c) expanding blue color jobs like crazy and (d) not killing a bunch or birds, bats, and Teddy Kennedy’s ocean view? Drill like crazy for tight shale gas.
Mandate all public vehicles (buses, postal vehicles, even taxis) be phased onto CNG (as is reguired in Alberta) ASAP,
Remove restrictions on nat gas drilling and laying pipelines to get it to market. (especially restrict TORT lawsuits to reasonable amounts so producers can quantify the “sovereign risk”), and
DROP subsidies on corn ethanol like a hot potato(e) (apologies to Dan Quail), and invest the same money in Nat Gas filling station credits.
Don’t think we got enough tight shale gas to pull this off? The CEO of Chesapeake thinks that the Haynesville shale may be the largest natural gas field EVER discovered [that includes Bahrain; google Bahrain gas while you’re at it]. And we haven’t even well delineated the Marcellus yet; my belief is that it may be bigger still; AND right down the road from the biggest gas market in the country.
Know all those tool-and-die makers in and around Detroit? Make natural gas development a top priority in this country, and we can use EVERY ONE OF THEM.
They may have to reacquainted to busting their butts (Texas is a “right to work” state; we don’t care what color or religion or where you came from, as long as you’re a “good hand” who works his butt off), but we COULD fix all these issues at once, provided Washington takes it’s collective head out of wherever it’s been stuck for the last 30 years.
There, now you know. Go Google Tight Shale.
You WILL NOT hear this from “environmentalists” or “greens” because (a) they aren’t mechanical or chemical or petroleum engineers, and emphatically don’t “get” thermodynamics and (b) fundamentally, they just want fewer people around, all with less money; a return to a natural utopia that never existed (which is why, parenthetically, I hate Renaissance Festivals; where’s the cholera? The graveyards full of mothers who died in childbirth?? Remember “nasty, brutish and short?” It SUCKED to be alive then, but I guess folks don’t want to hear, like, true stuff.)
One more parenthetical comment: has anyone ever wondered why the Federal government (even Bush’s administration) doesn’t consult the Energy business about “The Energy Crisis”, such as it is?? Wouldn’t that make sense?.
And a little aperatif: (one more Thing to Chew On): Every single petroleum engineer I have met in the last 30 years favors nuclear power. Every single one. Period.
Glen Beck said that it might be time for the central US to wall off the east and west coast and let the real America take over the center. I think he was joking but…..
Holy-moley !!!!
I am nuts!!!! lol
sarc/off
hareynolds
To support you practical reality, please see:
Matt Simmons’ Video on Oil and Gas Markets http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5130
A major portion of the oil and gas skilled labor will be retiring in the near future – right when needed to manage the massive increase needed to provide alternative fuels needed to manage Peak Oil.
Matthew R. Simmons speeches & Papers
http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/research.aspx?Type=msspeeches
The Oil And Gas System Is Sick The Commercial Club of Boston, February 11, 2009
In other words, the present economy is doing very well right now, compared to what is coming!
““He’s like any other president,” Wright said. “He’s a politician and he’s got to do what politicians do.”
Politicians are liars, liars are schmucks, therefore…Obama is a schmuck.
Why did I feel uncomfortable calling him that? Is something subliminal being done to me?
Here’s a tip to retain your sanity when the medical institutions have decalred your thoughts an illness:
Repeat the mantra over and over:
Coal is 100% natural
Coal is 100% organic
Coal produces plant food
The definition of fundamentalism is “having your conclusions set in concrete before entering the dialogue”
hareynolds @15:14:03
I love your rant. Excellent; I am in total agreement with you on many things. Not so sure about using CNG for driving cars.
BTW Do you work for T Boone Pickens? Just joking. He’s all in favor of Al Gore and climate hysteria as, for some reason, NG, but not LNG, has got a free pass from the enviro-fascists, … and he’s ready to produce gazillions of dollars of it.
‘Rhys Jaggar (08:00:17) :
The problem with this whole issue is that you have two sides who each have ulterior motives – the same one actually. The acquisition and maintenance of power.
The ‘greens’ were all untrained in science or scientists living off an ever-growing gravy train.
The ‘deniers’ were initially in the oil camp, who saw a threat to their profits and power base….’
Could I just say that I’ve always been a ‘denier’ but it has nothing to do with oil and everything to do with reason. I’m old enough to remember the global cooling scare of the 1970s as well as the never-ending series of moral panics that have characterised the past 20 years – AIDS, SARS, Bird Flu, Y2K, Human Variant CJD , BSE etc. I’ve also lived long enough to have been told that almost everything I eat and drink is either good for me or killing me according to whoever is paying the research budget. For years, I’ve been told that my safe alcohol consumption is 21 units per week only to find out 12 months ago that there was no scientific basis for the figure – it had been plucked out of the air.
In short, I’ve learned not to automatically believe everything I’m told – I’m naturally sceptical especially where politicians are involved. I’m particularly sceptical when the evidence is missing or unsubstantiated as it is for AGW. I know a lot less about science than many who contribute to this site but I do know that the only useful science is evidence-based, naturally sceptical and never settled. So please don’t tell me that I’m motivated by profits or power (if only..).
I certainly agree with you about the need to diversify on energy sources but that’s a political rather than an environmental argument. It’s also an argument for well-funded, good science because it’s pretty obvious that it’s not going to happen otherwise.
Indeed, I fail to understand why, on the present evidence, the green movement is so happy to see scant resources being wasted on propagating the AGW myth instead of being used to develop new energy technologies. And they think I’m deranged…
Brendan H. wrote:
“If it’s OK to label AGWers as mad, why is it not OK to label AGW sceptics as mad?”
Go right ahead–that’s half the fun of these intellectual dust-ups: gazing intently with ones X-ray eyes into the other blockhead’s noggin and reporting ones findings to ones allies. If a bunch of greenies want to hold a conference devoted to knowingly tapping their temples and rolling their eyes while pointing at a cartoon-figure villain, I’m OK with it. Personally, I would actually encourage this sort of conference, because video-snips from it can be obtained to use as mockery of the movement’s scientistic pretensions five or ten years down the road.
But I can understand why some posters on this site object more strenuously to what’s going on. I suspect they don’t–unlike me–view the social sciences that are involved in sponsoring the conference as 80% baloney and dismissible from the get-go, and they’re upset that their reputations for seriousness is being tainted by the enviros’ craziness. And/or they’re aggravated at the warmers for seeking to obtain a semi-official Diagnosis (from sciences they respect) that cool-headedness = craziness, in order to marginalize those who scoff at CAGW in the eyes of the polished pebbles in the MSM. This attempt to manipulate public perception and evade debate is obviously what Brendan O’Neill was getting at in the article atop this thread:
“Nothing better sums up the elitism and authoritarianism of the environmentalist lobby than its psychologisation of dissent. The labelling of any criticism of the politics of global warming, first as ‘denial’, and now as evidence of mass psychological instability, is an attempt to write off all critics and sceptics as deranged, and to lay the ground for inevitable authoritarian solutions to the problem of climate change. Historically, only the most illiberal and misanthropic regimes have treated disagreement and debate as signs of mental ill-health.
“This weekend, the University of West England is hosting a major conference on climate change denial. Strikingly, it’s being organised by the university’s Centre for Psycho-Social Studies. It will be a gathering of those from the top of society – ‘psychotherapists, social researchers, climate change activists, eco-psychologists’ – who will analyse those at the bottom of society, as if we were so many flitting, irrational amoeba under an eco-microscope. … Leading green writers have welcomed the West England get-together to study the denying masses.”
hareynolds (15:14:03) :
I was with you all the way up until the last, where nuclear power was endorsed. Sorry, that power source is too expensive, and creates a lasting legacy of toxics.
See This Link and
See This Link
Any U.S. utility that builds a new nuclear power plant will undergo the death spiral in power rates: Build a nuke, increase the power rates, customers go off-line by building cogen, PUC allows another rate hike to increase revenue to utility, more customers go off-line as their cogen projects become attractive. The ones hurt the most in the nuclear death spiral are the poor, and elderly on fixed incomes who cannot afford to install their own cogen power.
The oil and gas industry is partly to blame for their bad reputation by not doing more to educate and counter the mass media’s reports.
The people may learn, someday, when the lights go out and it gets cold. Or, when the lights go out and the A/C does not work.
Smokey wrote:
“I haven’t noticed the pro-AGW side telling their more extreme brethren that they are crossing the line. Have you? Silence is often concurrence.”
Well actually there was that woman from the Met Office about whom there was a thread a few weeks ago, plus another Warmer chimed in similarly about a week later.
JohnK (14:59:45) :
“Does anybody here actually believe that many? most? more that a tiny few? AGW believers think skeptics are nuts?:
AGW has actually become almost like a religion. There are believers who understand little about the science but accept it as a matter of faith. As with all religions, only the extremists or fundamentalists become problems. They are extremely intolerant of other views, as are the religious extremists on the christian right. Not everyone on the christian right is an extremist, just as not all AGW believers are extremists or fundamentalists on the issue. Most just have not questioned what they are told or do not have the time or education to look into it for themselves, and besides, it makes people feel good about giving up some stuff (sacrifice) for the greater good (which they assume to be true).
In Germany, before WW I, the Jewish people were well tolerated. After a big war, financial turmoil, a guy like Hitler was able to rally the people against a common enemy, Communists and Jews. That is an extreme example, but do not overlook peoples innate desire to have a common enemy to unite them, especially in times of distress, rational or not, and the political leaders exploit this.
AGW is a tool of a religous movement disguised as science where man is the enemy (sinner) and must be controlled to save Mother Earth (Goddess). Those who question the high priests (scientists) of this religion have chosen to be on the dark side (traditional religions would say we have chosen Satan) and must be punished. As Gorbachev said, there is a new 10 commandments out there .
This is not about science for the strongest supporters of AGW. This is not to say there is not a serious and honest scientific debate about CO2, especially feedbacks and climate sensitivity, but like Galileo, you have to watch out for those who say the science is settled, and scientists who seek government funding for research funding knows what is popular, and what is not.
There have even been calls to make skepticism illegal and lump it with holocaust denial.
And psychiatrists, given their dependence on government and the foundations who make research grants and provide endowments are not immune to pressures. Calling skepticism a mental disease also profits their profession since the Mental Health Parity Act passed last year means there are more dollars available for mental health professionals.
Of course, it’s not all about greed and power/control. There is an argument that our financial system needs a war subtitute to survive, or we need to have more wars, one or the other. So we fight an imaginary war with Climate Change, much less bloody than another World War. Unfortunately, this prevents discussion of the other option, which is changing to a financial system that does not depend on wars (imaginary or otherwise) to survive.
Fred Gams (21:19:34) :
I have to pinch myself these days to make sure I’m not having a nightmare. Really, WTF is going on with these people?
Well… Carl Gustav Jung (nice quote by the way Adolfo, Reich was one of Jung’s students) would have said it was to do with the psychology of transference.
By projecting the discomfort of the bad fit of their preferred theory/dogma to reality onto the discord of those holding the skeptical view, the hotheads feel empowered to cast them in the role of social misfits who must be cut asunder from the risk of tainting the perception of the unaware public. Formerly, the label of heretic was useful, but nowadays, a caring patrimony towards the mentally unstable is far more PC.
:Alan (05:26:18) said:
Misanthropy is the new racism. Just insert ‘brown’ in front of the ‘people’ word in some of those quotes above.
Quite the opposite. It’s the Europeans and North Americans, that are the worst carbon sinners and whose procreation is therefore the most damaging in the eyes of green Neomalthusians.
Didn’t you read about the official admonishing of Britons to think of Gaia first before deciding on the number of their children? Didn’t you read about the huuuuge carbon footprint of European babies and how it would be better for the planet when Europeans would assuage their parental instincts by adopting Third World orphans instead having their own lil’uns?
It SUCKED to be alive then
On the bright side, you didn’t have to put up with it for very long.
Roger Sowell (16:11:12)
The people may learn, someday, when the lights go out and it gets cold. Or, when the lights go out and the A/C does not work.
How did the Inuit manage during the little ice age, or didn’t they notice it?
I take it that ‘cogen’ means installing alternative means which backfeed onto the grid. I firmly believe that local generation is efficient until it’s transmitted over long distances. Reliability is the issue. Efficiently combusting local waste with minimal emissions is the answer to part of the equation.
“Sorry, that power source (nuclear) is too expensive, and creates a lasting legacy of toxics.”
Hard to believe that the French are smarter than we are…
I don’t think this conference on deniers being mentally ill is a joke. There have been calls from Hansen and Robert Kennedy and others to put oil company execs on trial. Heidi Cullen at the Weather Channel (USA) called for meteorologists who don’t agree with AGW to lose their credentials. State climatologists have been fired. There have been calls to keep skeptics off the air, which seems to be working in England where the gov’t owns BBC. This isn’t just politics and it has the potential to get really ugly.
David L. Hagen (15:33:46) said:
hareynolds
To support you practical reality, please see:
Matt Simmons’ Video on Oil and Gas Markets http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5130
A major portion of the oil and gas skilled labor will be retiring in the near future – right when needed to manage the massive increase needed to provide alternative fuels needed to manage Peak Oil.
Matt Simmons is correct about the personnel problem, but he’s completely WRONG about “Peak Oil”. If fact, he’s a bit of a laughingstock in the industry right now for his Peak Oil Predictions (“oil’s natural price is $378”); fortunately he does his investment banking schtick pretty well so he isn’t starving.
PLEASE, everybody, before you cite INTERNATIONAL Peak Oil as an accepted fact, do two things: (a) read King Hubbard’s ORIGINAL Thesis (b) read about proven reserves versus production. The EIA has pretty good numbers respected in the industry.
Hubbard’s prediction for Peak Oil in the USA was relatively VERY accurate because he was dealing with a ONE essentially contiguous free market which respected the right to private property. That is, the economic feedback loop worked. Not to say it wasn’t a brilliant thesis; unlike AGW models, his actually WORKED without fudging. However, it works for domestic USA only.
It does NOT scale-up simply because in most of the rest of the world, oil and gas are “public” (sic) goods and legal agreements often carry no weight above local political ambitions (see Chavez v. XOM, BP and Shell v. the Krelim (esp. TKP), The Ridiculous Decline of Cantarell (PEMEX’s Folly) and of course now Pelosi v. Everybody). The list is practically endless; ever heard of the Shah of Iran?
There of course HAS to be a Global “Peak” out there somewhere, but since the front side of the curve (see King Hubbard) is SKEWED (really, flattened) we can’t tell where the peak is going to be, although we know is has to be farther-out that the domestic analogue would forecast, if only becasue the stake holders do not act as “rational economic man”.
The Institit Francais de Petrole (IFP) said in 2006 or 2007 that the world Peak would be 2013. Today we all know that they are 100% wrong. and not only because OPEC has closed the taps by ~10% (although that proves my point). Like Harvard MBAs who forecast (to my face) in 1982 that oil was gong to $100, they learned higher-order (beyond linear) extrapolation, but not common sense. (oh, and those McKinsey MBAs WERE right about oil at $100, but it was a different dollar in another century, and besides the slut went to about $9/bbl for a long time before she went over $100 for a few months.)
My personal guess if that the real international “peak” (little “P”) will be about 2030, give or take 5 years. I figure 2 or 3 more price “shocks” by then, then a very long and slow decline lasting ~80-100 years. MAYBE longer. For the near term (3-5 years) I see oil between $25-50 (current dollars), Maybe $75. Everybody says that the price will go up quicker, but that’s exactly what was said between 1982 and 1987 (look it up). There’s too much overhang for prices to go up any quicker.
Most operators can make good money in that range and drilling goes on apace in many international markets, especially for Petrobras, and even PEMEX is seeing the error of their ways (they are furiously contracting for rigs to drill their way out of the Cantarell mess). The US is really the only province which ISN’T drilling; even the prissy-clean Norskes are issuing new permits. Chavez is definitely screwed BADLY and Putin will have to scramble. Note that lifting costs in Arabia are still under $10/bbl, even though the dollar is tinier, and ARAMCO reserve production is over say 2mmbopd now, maybe larger?
I think that the next significant innovation will likely be whatever comes after tertiary production (secondary is waterflood, tertiary is steam or CO2 flood; I guess it’s quaternary.) My guess is that it’s being contemplated now, will be patented within the next 5 years, and will be commercial within 10-15 years.
Don’t know what that’s gonna be, but I suspect it will involve massive “focused” fracturing, probably something on the order of tens of thousands of HP released downhole in under a second. Likely would have to involve a phase change or rapid chemical reaction to shorten the pressure spike enough. PROBABLY will involve parallel long-reach horizontal holes, so there’s volume available. The idea would be for the shock wave to rearrange formations, at least locally, so we could recover some more of the ~60% of oil traditionally left in place when the easy stuff is gone. If I had to guess, I would think XOM will be the ones with the patent.
Only downside of something like that would be the seismic “bump” you’d feel. Not a good idea for the LA basin I reckon.
If something like THAT happens, all bets are off; even the domestic USA Peak could be in trouble.
It SUCKED to be alive then
On the bright side, you didn’t have to put up with it for very long.- evan
Evan always looks on the sunny side of life… or whatever.
tallbloke (17:52:34) :
Cogen has several meanings, but as I am using it, this means generating power and heat for one’s own use. There are several designs on the market, one is a natural-gas powered piston engine that turns a generator, then the exhaust is used to produce hot water for domestic use. Other designs burn natural gas in micro-turbines for power generation, and recover heat from the exhaust.
Industrial-strength versions also produce steam. There is also a tri-gen technology that produces power, hot water, and chilled water.
Some cogen systems will generate excess power that is sold back to the utility. A side benefit is no new power transmission lines are required because the power is used either on-site, or returned via existing power lines.
I got into a debate over this with a dis-believer on another site last year, and posted this (see below) to my blog. The presenter referred to, Mr. Tommy John, has some rather serious credentials, and was an invited speaker to an engineering society to which I belong.
See: This Link
Re the Inuit, I am told that until about 100 years ago they used no external energy such as gas, oil, or electricity. I suspect they adapted and coped quite well during the Little Ice Age, but that is not my area. There may be some native Alaskans on WUWT that may know.
Roger Sowell (16:11:12) said:
hareynolds (15:14:03) :
I was with you all the way up until the last, where nuclear power was endorsed. Sorry, that power source is too expensive, and creates a lasting legacy of toxics.
Mike Bryant (18:03:33) said :
“Sorry, that power source (nuclear) is too expensive, and creates a lasting legacy of toxics.” Hard to believe that the French are smarter than we are…
Roger, didn’t say nuclear was as easy as say NATURAL GAS, in the near term, but that PETROLEUM ENGINEERS (the folks who actually make-up Evil Big Oil; anybody actually met one??? I have. Oops, I guess I ARE one) favor a nuclear solution. Not necessarily the CURRENT nuclear solution (whatever that is, we haven’t started one in 30 years, so I’m not quite sure). For sake of argument, say an updated version of a French lightwater reactor (Westinghouse design, do I remember that correctly?)
The thinking, from an engineering perspective, is that (a) biofuels won’t work as they are predicated on a preexisting CHEAP fossil fuel transpotation system and coal-fired electricity. (b) Wind won’t work without MASSIVE subsidies, and then only 30% of the time, AND NOT even that if we get a little icy. (c) Solar, like wind, isn’t nearly dense enough. All the “alternatives” are cute, and I like the diversification and the possibility of offshoot technology, but they are small scale solutions only.
For an elementary discussion of the thermo of power systems (really “power density”) see Design News middle of last year.
[Anybody notice now the LEFT, once proponents of massive economies of scale (Aswan High Dam, Three Gorges, TVA, Bonneville Authority, ALL USSR heavy industry) has now reverted to Tiny Scale (ala Mao Tse Tung’s Great Leao Forward and the Backyard smelters; always wanted one of those). It’s as if we have gotten scared of large things we can’t understand; rather than work harder on the understanding part, we seem to throw the baby out with the bathwater]
Simply from an ENGINEERING PERSPECTIVE, nuclear is the very best option across the board.
Frankly, it’s also the safest (another thing that nobody wants to hear, and the government doesn’t broadcast), even long term. Coal and oil and gas extraction are much safer now, but ONE mine or rig disaster has a way of killing more folks than ALL the nuclear accidents in the west (excluding the USSR) for the last 50 years.
Of course, irrational fears of bicoastal types are worth more politically than the lives of coal miners from West Virginia and oilfield workers from Louisiana.
[N.B. IF AGW were indeed real, the one and only logical source of power would indeed be Nuclear. Some greens actually are espousing that course, now, too, although for the wrong reasons to my way of thinking]
And of course, Mike is correct that the French have had NO major accidents and produce a high percentage of their electricity (what 80%??) from nukes. HOWEVER, they have the great advantage that they had NO CHOICE (“A death sentence is a wonderous way to focus a man’s attention” -S. Johnson, by Boswell) so they replicated, over and over, a standard proven design, and they pay attention to what they’re doing. It CAN be done. It’s just that we’re, well, to borrow from Atty. Gen’l (“say what, brother?”) Holder, we’re just cowards.
@Mike Bryant (18:03:33) :
“Sorry, that power source (nuclear) is too expensive, and creates a lasting legacy of toxics.”
Hard to believe that the French are smarter than we are…
I had to research this a few months ago, and found that 1) French nuclear reactors are owned by the government, and their true costs are never revealed. 2) They are heavily subsidized by the government, 3) Their nuclear reactors generate far more power than is required at night, so they export power to neighboring countries. Nukes apparently have a very poor turn-down ability, and cannot easily follow the load, 4) spent nuclear fuel is stored on-site in pools just like in the U.S.
So, if the U.S. were to build enough nukes to provide 80 percent of our power demand, it would require heavy federal subsidies to maintain customer prices at 10 to 12 cents per kwh (subsidize 20 to 30 cents), plus we would then export power to neighboring countries each night, uh…that would be Mexico, and Canada. Not sure they want our power on those conditions.
The first new plant with the French design (Areva), called a Mod III, is under construction in Finland, and it has serious cost over-runs and 3 years of construction delay.
What this effectively means is, that even if the U.S. government bans all lawsuits against nuclear power plants, and gives carte-blanche to utilities to build all they want, we will never have more than about 30 percent of our power supplied by nukes. We currently obtain about 20 percent via nuclear. Those who say we must shut down coal-fired plants and replace them with nuclear, know not of what they speak, because that would require 70 percent generation by nuclear.
hareynolds (19:13:16) :
You might want to click on my name, then read my bio; and see if I have ever met a petroleum engineer.
From what you wrote above, you have parts of it right.
We can discuss this nuclear issue at length on my blog – http://www.energyguysmusings.blogspot.com
Or, if it is ok with Anthony and the moderators, we can kick this around here. I will be linking often to my blog. Either way is fine with me!
Robert Wood (15:57:05) said:
hareynolds @15:14:03
I love your rant. Excellent; I am in total agreement with you on many things. Not so sure about using CNG for driving cars.
BTW Do you work for T Boone Pickens? Just joking. He’s all in favor of Al Gore and climate hysteria as, for some reason, NG, but not LNG, has got a free pass from the enviro-fascists, … and he’s ready to produce gazillions of dollars of it.
Mucahs gracias, jeffe/
I respect T. Boone for stuff he did in the early days (Mesa Petroleum was a North Sea pioneer with their Beatrice platform, named after T. Boone’s wife; gutsy move naming a grotty old oil platform after your wife) but lately everybody here understands that T.Boone is just trying to suck a little harder on the Public Teat than everybody else. Considering the competition, that;s saying something.
Unfortunately, the public persona of the oil business lies somewhere between JR Ewing (and NO, Dallas is NOT larger than Houston) and T.Boone. It’s no wonder we’re dissed.
This country ought to know and revere guys like Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon. While GM and GE and AIG and every d-darned bank in the country were self-immolating, Exxon has been slowly, steadily improving every year. I think they are the best company in the world (return on capital employed 34%), but everybody else (none of whom have never set foot on a drilling rig, let alone actually SEEN crude oil) seems to think they are criminals.
AS for CNG, you are right that it isn’t the perfect fuel, as it’s bulky and low-“octane” and early tanks had a habit of coming apart (read: kaboom)if you spilled battery acid on them (but who doesn’t?). But it is a GREAT urban fuel and CLEAN CLEAN; heck, forklifts run on LP gas INSIDE.
T. Boone IS right about the Nat Gas part of his plan (of course, he’s had the same plan for 30 years, but never before had the “energy crisis” as an interview enabler. Ooops, where did I put that darned energy crisis?? It was here somewhere, I sware. )
The windpower part is pure pork (esp the “please pay for transmission lines to my windmills”), but in Texas we wouldn’t respect him if he wasn’t AUDACIOUSLY trying to stuff public money into his trousers by the fistful. c.f. Mssrs Brown and Root. All the better to mock and pillory. Even if he fails this time, we know he’ll be back, heck he’s only like 75, isn’t he?
Roger Sowell (19:35:05) said :
I had to research this a few months ago, and found that 1) French nuclear reactors are owned by the government, and their true costs are never revealed. 2) They are heavily subsidized by the government, 3) Their nuclear reactors generate far more power than is required at night, so they export power to neighboring countries. Nukes apparently have a very poor turn-down ability, and cannot easily follow the load, 4) spent nuclear fuel is stored on-site in pools just like in the U.S ETC ETC
Good post. All absolutely true AFAIK.
I whole heartedly agree that nukes are complicated, expensive, dangerous if mismanaged, etc. etc.
I think it’s especially telling that the new gen French reactor in Finland is horribly over budget, but I see that as evidence of the decline of French engineering (Peugeot much?) in the last 40 years, and especially abandonment of the guiding principles that made their program work in the first place.
Like the Brazilian oil business, the early French program concentrated on simple robust design, and repetitive builds to speed-up the learning curve.
They’ve thrown that away and are believing their own press about how smart they are.
I agree that 80% nukes is too high for a country with the opportunity for a rich mix of alternatives hooked to the grid(s). But if we don’t start building NOW (assuming say min 8 years start to finish) nuke’s share of US power will get down to about 5% before it starts to recover.
Actually that sounds like I want the government to BUILD nukes I just want a level playing field for ALL electrical generation methods so the market can assess the risks without having to weigh wacky sovereign risks (like pulling the plug on Shoreham and South Texas withut reason) and give us the most efficient power possible/
If the other voices in my head are any measure, this is supposed to be a FUNNY post!!! So stop with the seriousness already.
PS to my previous response to Brendan H., who wrote:
“If it’s OK to label AGWers as mad, why is it not OK to label AGW sceptics as mad?”
It’s not equally OK because the skeptics represent a marginalized minority view (and because, in conjunction with that, those doing the diagnosis are society’s semi-official witch-doctors.)
Please note where this thread began.
Ridicule is the best defense against totalitarian thought.
Please go to the Facebook link, and have a say…
http://www.facebook.com/s.php?q=global+warming+deniers+are+mental&n=-1&k=400000000010&sf=r&init=q&sid=3c36d7f4e1bdf34ca050826109c319a0
Its part of a more general obsessive pattern of thinking very common in conspiracy theories. Part of it is this persecution complex you exhibit. There are a lot of similarities between truthers, birthers, deniers, creationists etc. in that once the persecution complex gets going any counter-evidence to the conspiracy theory becomes part of the persecution and therefor evidence of the conspiracy.
The fact is that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and our emission of it is having predictable and predicted effects on the greenhouse effect. This fact has been subject to intense scrutiny by a global community of scientific specialists over several decades… but then, they’re all “in on it” aren’t they? Those greeny, elitist, global socialist jerks!
Oh, there’s also the aspect of self flattery. Conspiracy theorists all love the idea that they’ve got it all figured out and everyone else is just brainwashed by the man’s propaganda. I’d imagine a lot of the readers of this blog get off on the idea that they’re smarter than all those scientists, as if getting your opinion from some dip[snip] blog while ignoring the mass of peer reviewed literature made you smart.
“It will be a gathering of those from the top of society – ‘psychotherapists, social researchers, climate change activists, eco-psychologists’ – who will analyse those at the bottom of society, as if we were so many flitting, irrational amoeba under an eco-microscope. The organisers say the conference will explore how ‘denial’ is a product of both ‘addiction and consumption’ and is the ‘consequence of living in a perverse culture which encourages collusion, complacency and irresponsibility’ (1). It is a testament to the dumbed-down, debate-phobic nature of the modern academy that a conference is being held not to explore ideas – to interrogate, analyse and fight over them – but to tag them as perverse.”
ROFLMAO!
Dull people gathing to discuss how to be snobs and bigots against other peoples opinions that they do not agree with.
Yawn….Zzzzz
Roger Knights: “Go right ahead–that’s half the fun of these intellectual dust-ups…”
I’m with you there, although I’m not sure that one could get away with calling sceptics crazy on WUWT.
“And/or they’re aggravated at the warmers for seeking to obtain a semi-official Diagnosis (from sciences they respect) that cool-headedness = craziness…”
As I say, the press release by the University of West England doesn’t mention anything about diagnosing climate change denial as a mental disorder.
Perhaps there’s some projecting going on. Whoops. Not only have I indulged myself by psychologising, but I’ve also implied that sceptics are crazy. I’m beginning to see your point about the fun stuff.
REPLY – “Get away with it?” Who’s gonna stop you? Unless you make a personal attack, you are free to speculate on the sanity of skeptics all you please. (You may get a few replies, of course, but that’s jazz.) ~ Evan
You want evidence of mental disorder then you only have to look at the Guardian’s environmental journalists.
Today they are running this article
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/08/green-weddings
With this sub-title
“Ethical weddings on the increase as conscientious couples seek to save money and reduce their carbon footprint”
So weddings were never ethical before. All weddings that have a carbon footprint deemed to large by the carbon cops are unethical.
Is there any part of your life they don’t want to judge or control?
Its part of a more general obsessive pattern of thinking very common in conspiracy theories… The fact is that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and our emission of it is having predictable and predicted effects on the greenhouse effect. This fact has been subject to intense scrutiny by a global community of scientific specialists over several decades…
This blog and others like it ARE the scrutiny. The contributors to WUWT are, for the most part, pretty smart, well-educated, and often semi-reputable scientists in their own right. On more than one occasion WUWT has been in the forefront, ahead of the curve, dissecting climate science, pointing out flaws in the data, exploring various theories, etc.
The contributors are neither crazed nor deluded and nowhere near as political, in general, as the alarmist set. And much less enamored of or taken in by conspiracy theory, as well.
In fact, if there are attributes shown consistently here, they are clarity of thought and objective inquiry. WUWT is not a kneejerk groupthink community. Alarmist trolls come and go, but the oeuvre is far from unified agreement. There is a great deal of self-critical analysis and debate, something not found on AGW sites.
There is much to learned in the depths of the hundreds of posts and thousands of comments. The “problem” with AGW is not psychosis, it is ignorance. This blog is the cure for that.
I find it rather interesting what the AGW/CC pseudo-scientific establishment has done.
Initially, the use of the “denier” term to describe Skeptics was a deliberate ad hominem referring to the phrase “holocaust denier”. But, when you change the word “denier” with its very negative political connotations to “denial” you change the meaning to a psychological term.
According to Freudian psychology: “Defense mechanisms are indirect ways of dealing or coping with anxiety, such as explaining problems away or blaming others for problems. Denial is one of many defense mechanisms. It entails ignoring or refusing to believe an unpleasant reality. Defense mechanisms protect one’s psychological wellbeing in traumatic situations, or in any situation that produces anxiety or conflict. However, they do not resolve the anxiety-producing situation and, if overused, can lead to psychological disorders.”
“Denial can also be exhibited on a large scale— among groups, cultures, or even nations. Lucy Bregman gives an example of national denial of imminent mortality in the 1950s: school children participated in drills in which they hid under desks in preparation for atomic attacks. Another example of large-scale denial is the recent assertion by some that the World War II Holocaust never occurred.”
While the “denier” term was and still is used to try to marginalize Climate Realists by imputing negative political motivations, the use of the psychological word “denial” is far more insidious. The implication, of course, is that they “know” that AGW is true, and that is an “established fact”. They then impale us on the twin horns of the words “denier” and “denial”, such that if your motivation isn’t political, then it is psychological, possibly both. In either case, you can be dismissed, and your arguments do not matter. For them, not only is the “debate over”, it should not even be discussed. The only thing we should be debating now, to them, is “how to deal with manmade climate change”. The fact that there are all these “deniers” though, who “just don’t get it”, is a problem for them. This conference then is their attempt at explaining this “problem” and what to do about it. It also sets the Climate Witch Doctors up as the arbiters of Truth, and we, lowly, confused Skeptics as their “patients”. Very interesting indeed.
“Ethical weddings on the increase as conscientious couples seek to save money and reduce their carbon footprint”
Oh man, my wedding wasn’t ethical?
Does this mean I’m single?!?!
I better ask my wife.
IF I ever marry again, and yes that is a big IF, sorry, but I want to leave a carbon footprint behind of about a 1/2 caret or more, with smaller stones around it here and there. That puppy must be big enough to catch on my sweater. Carbon footprint be damned.
Ms. Gray (08:12:51), as always, you inspire. I’m sure your sweater will increase your carbon footprint, too, especially if it’s made from wool (sheep are heating the planet with their exhalations!) or silk (all those little worms) or even some nice Chinese microfibre (made in a coal-fired plant!). In your honor I have been wearing my shiny black open-toe sling-back spike heels more often lately.
Bruce (05:33:05), my problem with the word “denier” is it actually means something in the real world. It’s a measurement term for silk, nylon and rayon fibers (and also a neat old coin). I would prefer to be classified by a positive term, not a negative like denier or skeptic, perhaps “realist”?
This is dating me, but wasn’t it used to categorize women’s hosiery too? Back when the seam was straight or not? I sure would like to know what knitting stitch was used back then. I still have hosiery from back then that have not a run or snag in them. That stitch was stronger than steel. These days, hosiery is a one-time wear thing. Every goddamn day its “Do I buy a pair, or buy my coffee today?”
Mike D. Thanks for the response, but I must beg to differ. I’ve followed this blog since I’ve been on wordpress and seen nothing but a parade of bull. Consider as a recent example the post titled “Basic Geology Part 3 – Sea Level Rises During Interglacial Periods”. First note the appeal to flattery in the very title of the post. You see, those IPCC dummies don’t even understand basic geology. You, dear reader, are so much smarter than those dummy scientists and can get the facts in this short blog post. Pfffffft.
The post argues that because sea levels have risen for reasons other than human caused climate change in the past, they must not be rising for that reason now. This is a fallacy of causal reasoning. Imagine a crime scene investigator who reasoned like this: “The last murder I investigated was a jealous boyfriend case, so lets just assume this one is too”. Like effects do not necessarily have like causes. True, natural climate change has occurred in the past. Do you really think this is news to climate researchers trying to figure out the causes of the current trend?
The post specifically states the following:
How many readers of this blog turned to the IPCC report and peer reviewed scientific literature to find out more after reading that? How many do you think rested on the warm feeling that they know The Truth, unlike the brainwashed masses and the scientific conspirators? Now here is the difference between a denier and a skeptic. The skeptic will read this blog but will also do further research. The denier is the sort of conspiracy theorist that doesn’t trust mainstream science, suspecting they’re “in on it”. I don’t know which you are, denier or skeptic. If you are a skeptic and not a denier, might I direct you to IPCC FAR ch. 5, specifically FAQ 5.1. You will find references to the scientific literature there.
hareynolds (20:36:34) :
So true about Rex Tillerson. I had a few classes with him many years ago in undergrad. It is no surprise to me, nor anyone else who knows him, that he rose to the highest position in the biggest oil company in the world.
But about the wind-power and CNG, aka the Pickens Plan, it works quite well here in California. It will not work as well elsewhere, no doubt, especially where the wind turbines are subject to icing over. Icing over is not a problem in California, at least thus far! But the fact is, in California we have thousands of CNG powered vehicles, from cars to buses, and thousands of windmills generating power every day. This has existed for many years.
T. Boone sells the natural gas and compressor stations out here, and made a fortune.
Yes. I used to get seam stockings at a splendid little shop near Macy’s in SF. They carried extra long sizes for the trannies (and tall girls like me) and the quality was exquisite. My favorite pair lasted for years. The difference wasn’t the particular knitting stitch so much as the thickness, strength, and numbers of twists per inch in the thread used to make the stockings. Same deal with old denim jeans vs. new denim jeans. The first Levis had a huge number of twists per inch and a very dense twill weave. The pair I bought last week is like tissue in comparison.
Anthony, sorry it’s a bit OT, but it *is* applied science! And, if we are entering a minimum, the warmth and durability of clothing is soon going to increase in importance.
Ok, I can’t resist. In my previous post I quoted Steven Goddard on this blog claiming that the IPCC predicts 2 meters of sea level increase this century. What does the IPCC actually say though?
So where did Goddard get 2 meters from? I did a quick googling and found a number of places suggesting that the IPCC has underestimated in light of new evidence of accelerated melting. None of this was mentioned in Goddard’s post, which is why I encourage skeptics, ~snip~, to do more than read this blog and pat themselves on the back.
Mine are so long that I have to hook them below the band. Which still hasn’t harmed them one bit. The only thing I can’t fix is the built-in heel shaping. The heel is no where near my heel. However, the heel shaping fits my ankle only because my ankle bone takes up the slack a bit. The amazing thing is the toe. How in the world the toe shows no sign of wear after 40 years of occasional use is just amazing. And the toe seam is the most comfortable part. Not so with todays hosiery. That toe seam is like walking on a straight pin laying flat in your shoes all day long.
jrshipley (08:55:58) :
Label me a skeptic, then, and a serious denier where the IPCC and other so-called “scientists” have blatantly lied, distorted, manipulated, and/or hidden their data and methods from scrutiny.
I do wish Dr. Richard Feynman were still alive, just to hear what he would say about the IPCC and all the “science” surrounding it.
Many of us, even those having no PhD after our names, are quite capable through education and experience of reading and understanding what is served up. Our good and trusty servants physics, math, thermodynamics, chemistry, and statistics do not let us down. I also rely heavily on economics. I wish more people would.
A good skeptic, in my opinion, listens to the “science” but verifies with his/her own eyes. As President Reagan said in a different context, Trust but Verify.
So, we are told the debate is over, the science is settled. Is that a skeptic, or denier issue? Well, if the science is settled, why did NASA send a (failed) satellite up to measure CO2? There are many, many, other such examples of knowing that the science is not “settled.”
Or, another good one, does settled science have multiple models, none of which agree with the other? The GCMs are manifold. Are there truly as many models, with different results, for predicting the speed of a falling object acted upon solely by gravity? When the GCM’s can agree, and get their predictions as accurate as a gravity equation, THEN will I agree that the science is settled.
Ya’ll have a ways to go.
If the IPCC (the “scientists”) are correct, why have so few of their gloom-and-doom predictions come to pass? Is that a skeptic or denier issue? (refer to predicting velocity of a falling object acted upon by gravity, above) Smokey regularly posts links to IPCC global temperature predictions, yet none of the (at least three!) measurements of global temperature match the IPCC.
The “scientists” tell us the seas are rising. Not off of California, they are not. The government’s own satellite data shows this. Further, why is the sea level data not on the public website after December 31, 2008? The trend was downward; could it be that the trend is continuing downward, and that is just too embarrassing for the AGW crowd?
Hurricanes are supposed to be growing greater and more frequent, per the “scientists.” They are not. Should a thinking person accept that as a skeptic, or a denier?
The ice at the poles is predicted to melt away and cause great rises in sea level, islands inundated, and huge population relocations. From above, we know the seas are not rising, so the ice is not melting. Which islands are underwater, and how many million people are dislocated?
Oceans are cooler, not hotter. Air temperatures in Europe, and North America are colder, and snows are greater.
All of these things exist even while CO2 is increasing in the atmosphere. But, no major volcano erupted recently to cool things down.
Just how many lies, and flat-out wrong predictions, are we supposed to accept from the “scientists,” before a rational person says this is a bunch of crap?
We have our own eyes, and our own ears, and with the internet, we can find stories such as the party ship and the icebreaker (!) caught, stuck, in ice in the St. Lawrence — weeks before the ice usually closes in. Sure, that is an anecdotal piece of evidence, but it has photos, and eye-witness accounts, and official statements. As an attorney, I can assure you that is very strong evidence.
This is not a game anymore. This is deadly serious business. California, where I Iive and work, has already passed strong legislation to adversely impact all aspects of our once-great economy; this is known as AB 32. I predict it will be known in history as the Bill that Killed California.
President Obama, with a complicit Congress and Senate, has promised to sign into law a similar bill in 2009. Watch for the Dow Jones index to take another swan dive when that one becomes law. Dow 2000, anyone?
The social and political consequences of millions of retirees with zero funds on which to live, because Global Warming legislation cratered the economy, are things the politicians should be contemplating.
So, I deny what is obviously and demonstrably false. And, because of the falsehoods and obvious manipulations that we have seen repeatedly thus far, I am highly skeptical of anything else spouting forth from the so-called “scientists,” especially the IPCC.
Long rant, ya’ll. I’ll go have my soothing herbal tea now, and contemplate the snow storm in the Seattle area.
Again.
In March.
Pamela Gray,
Your posts always make me laugh. Here is one upside to GW…in the warm summer months, I go hoseless. Not possible in the colder months, but then I do wear a lot of tights, which have a much stronger weave and don’t run.
Also, if you buy the thigh-high sort of hosiery, each leg is independent, so if one leg runs, you just mix the remaining leg in with your other pairs (all the same color, bien sur). And thigh-highs are sexy.
I think it’s just a hippy hugfest there’s nothing very serious there.
I hoped that reading the comments to this post would let me relive the delight of turning over a rotting log when I was younger.
Thank you Anthony!
REPLY: You are quite welcome, though I’ll point out that derisive labeling is a foolish tool. – Anthony
Mike Bryant
“I better ask my wife.”
I’d do it via email or long-distance, if I were you.
Wow, Roger, I enjoyed the detailed and passionate response. It sounds like a summation for the jury, devastating. I’m voting guilty.
Mike
Roger, you say that sea levels are not rising off of California. The IPCC report I referenced makes clear that there are regional differences in changing sea levels and thoroughly discusses the physical basis for these differences. Even the post on this very blog that I referenced made clear that sea levels are in fact rising, but you deny [snip] this?
Finally, thank you for indicating who the real fearmongers are in this debate, namely people such as yourself who claim that we cannot stop changing the climate and also rebuild our economy after the Bush collapse. So pessimistic. I believe that America is up to these challenges, if only we can overcome the natering nabobs of negativity and get to work.
You said:
“nothing better sums up the elitism and authoritarianism of the environmentalist lobby than its psychologisation of dissent…. and to lay the ground for inevitable authoritarian solutions to the problem of climate change.”
I’m in favor of environmental conservation, but I don’t psychologise dissenters. So, since I don’t fit your broad sweep, might the “lobby” not be as monolithic as you imply? I can only think of a few people I know who are fringe-ish enough to be that narrow. Most people simply care about the water, air, soil and animals.
But as for “inevitable authoratarian solutions,” I’d like to see the data that leads you to that conclusion (#1). And #2, what alternative approach do you suggest for managing and caring for the environmental degradation that *is* occuring? Do you feel that a continued “anything goes” free-wheeled approach is more likely to cause people to be more caring?
For example, your graphs on climate change & CO2 compared to life expectancy are interesting, but have you extrapolated that data out to estimate global life expectancy and quality of life for global population 3, 4, or 5 generations from now given our rate of resource burn? Burning faster now may fuel our longer lives but what does it mean down the road for those who come after us?
Thanks.
“please refrain from playing climate gutter ball.”
let me relive the delight of turning over a rotting log
Sounds like he wants pull flies wings off rather than play ball Anthony.
The reason there are women with thigh high tights here but not on Alarmist blogs is that women do not like stinky hippies. They like smart forward thinking guys, who dress well, eat well, wash well, work well and drive well. They like guys with big…….carbon footprints 😉
jrshipley,
The problem is that you start from the assumption that CO2 is causing global warming and like the warm-mongers you are not prepared to be convinced otherwise.
Most of is who contribute to this site, scientists and non-scientists alike, would be quite happy to agree with the science of global warming except that we never get to see any. We get ad hominem attacks; we get “the science is settled” (in which case it isn’t science); we get told if we don’t agree we are deluded or shills of the oil or electricity industry (conveniently forgetting that both have enthusiastically jumped on the cap and trade bandwagon now they see some profit in it.
The wheels on the AGW bandwagon are coming off — NOT because the theory’s wrong (though I think it is) but because there is an increasing number of scientists and other intelligent and reasoning human beings who are seeing other possible causes of the global warming of the last 30 years and the warm-mongers refuse to consider the possibility that they might be a better metric for measuring climate change. (Bear in mind that there has been no net warming in the last six years at least: the models say this cannot be since warming and CO2 are in lockstep, even though they are now trying to tell us that this is part of the pattern. You cannot have it both ways!)
Added to which we are extremely doubtful about computer models that are told what answer they have to come up with before they start (positive feedback where there is empirical evidence of the opposite, to quote one example).
I could go on for several pages!
jrshipley (11:44:19) :
Even the post on this very blog that I referenced made clear that sea levels are in fact rising,
The data is here:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_noib_global_sm.jpg
It shows sea levels peaked at the end of 2005 and have been falling on the average since.
Plate tectonics changes the sea levels and makes adjustment to the depth of seas all the time. Tectonics do not exist in climate models.
Water usage isn’t included in climate models either, especially future water usage.
Clouds and precipitation aren’t done well in climate models at all.
So when the IPCC claims they know what sea levels are going to look like in many years to come, I would ask them to show me which crystal ball they were using
How about “Phobiaphilia” Love of Fear.
The AGW movement is based on the sale of fear… Why people love to buy the stuff I don’t know. However I speculate that the process goes as follows.
Sales. Here have some fear…
Buyer. Oh.. that’s good, I was getting bored…
Sales. Now that your frightened… I’m here to save you…
Buyer. Oh… thanks… I thought that I was going to die….
Sales. No problem – your safe as long as you do as I tell you…
Buyer. Whew! For a minute there, I thought that I might have to take personal responsibility for my life…
Buyer. Hey does this cost me anything????
Sales (sotto voce). Only everything…
Sales. Hey I’m saving your life here… get over it.
tallbloke (12:59:04) :
jrshipley (11:44:19) :
Even the post on this very blog that I referenced made clear that sea levels are in fact rising,
The data is here:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_noib_global_sm.jpg
It shows sea levels peaked at the end of 2005 and have been falling on the average since.
I’m sorry tallbloke. I’m under the impression that the graph that you have just linked to shows that.
[1] The sea level is still rising.
[2] That the rate of rising appears to have stalled over the last 2 to 3 years.
I fully grant that “rising sea levels” are an AGW Poster Child, however the key arguments – to my mind – are the following.
[1] That sea levels have been rising since the last ice age as a result of natural climate variation.
[2] There is nothing “catastrophic” about the current rate of sea level rise.
[3] For sea levels to rise catastrophically, large sections of Greenland and Antarctic ice will need to melt, for which there is not yet substantial or unequivocal evidence.
I may have got this wrong.
My boyfriend goes from white to black every day. He owns a welding shop and smells like metal shavings mixed with tractor grease, no matter how hard he scrubs. But then I grew up on a farm with a blacksmith shop. I like the smell of metal shavings and tractor grease.
REPLY: Smells like “Lincoln” is something I’m familiar with – Anthony
Sam. I don’t know how you could have any clue where I started in investigating these issues based on a few comments. I’m not the least bit insecure about whether I’ve given adequate attention to the skeptical arguments. I’ve followed the debate for nearly a decade now and get a little obsessive from time to time in researching and responding to skeptics/deniers. I realize you covet your persecuted status, but you must realize that ad hominems go both ways… take it from this “environmental whacko socialist treehugger”.
You write: “would be quite happy to agree with the science of global warming except that we never get to see any.” Seriously? None whatsoever? A mark of an evidentially weak position is the need to grotesquely overstate. You may start with the IPCC reports. If you think that that process was rigged by socialist conspirators at the UN (or whatever) then you may turn to the scientific papers cited therein. It’s one thing to, as a skeptic, attempt to refute the scientific case that has been layed out in decades of research. It’s quite another to deny the research even exists.
Aron,
Yes, we skeptical women like men with a big…er…carbon footprint.
And there are no thigh-high-wearing women in the AGW crowd because they have to wear pants to cover up the fact that they don’t shave their legs.
Sorry, Anthony, was that playing climate gutterball? :+)
Queen1 (10:41:18) :
My mom used to go one better and cut the ruined leg off a pair of tights. When she had two like that she’d wear them together, swore the two ‘tops’ meant she could do without a girdle. Extra layer for warmth too. Hey, that could worth trying if it gets any colder.
Tallbloke. The link you provided shows sea levels continuing to rise. I think you are confused by the fact that the increase is not monotonic. It goes up and down, but tends to increase statistically. You say sea levels have fallen since 2005. By the same standard they fell between 98 and 01, then fell again between 02 and 04. When will they stop falling?!!!? LOL. Of course, you’ve cherry-picked 05 precisely because there’s a spike there. This is the same childish point as the “warming stopped in 98” line, an argumentum ad nauseum that one hears all to often. Grow up.
The fact of the matter is that the IPCC was conservative in its estimate of sea level increase and did not predict a 2 meter rise as this blog has falsely reported. The IPCC assumed no major loss of mass from Greenland or Antartica this century. Observations subsequent recently published in Nature and Science (two
top journalscoconspirators) to the IPCC report, however, indicate that Greenland and Antartica may be losing mass much sooner (more of that nonexistent science).So, if you’re keen on making the point that some of the science is not absolutely settled realize that goes both ways. Outcomes could be not as bad or much worse. What is widely accepted by experts, and in that sense settled, is that we are changing the climate. We could know-for-sure what the outcomes will be by continuing to change the climate. Out of pure scientific curiosity, I’m for it. However, it strikes me as highly unethical to perform this experiment on the ecologies that humans rely on for food and water.
“Observations subsequent recently published in Nature and Science [snip]to the IPCC report, however, indicate that Greenland and Antartica may be losing mass much sooner (more of that nonexistent science).”
This should read.
“Observations subsequent to the IPCC report have been recently published in Nature and Science [snip], however, and they indicate that Greenland and Antartica may be losing mass much sooner (more of that nonexistent science).”
jrshipley
Yes, I say the sea levels are not rising. For evidence, have a look at the U. Colorado site’s “wizard,” and gaze at all the blue/purple area on their world map. Then, click the cursor in the blue next to San Francisco, and observe the little graph that shows up. My graph of their data shows 5 mm decrease since 1993. If the seas are rising at what is it they say? 3 mm or 4 mm per year? Then over 15 years that graph should trend UP by 45 to 60 mm (that’s about 2 inches).
Over the past 5 years, 2004-2008, the decreasing trend is much more pronounced, at 50 mm in 5 years. This is clear and convincing evidence that IPCC has something very, very, wrong in their sea level claims.
For anyone who wants to verify or duplicate these results, this is from latitude 38 North, Longitude 236 in their nomenclature. Don’t believe me, go run these numbers for yourself.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/wizard.php
Then, compare the small amount of red area on the map, with all the blue and purple. After that, please tell me again that the global sea level is rising.
I do not have to make claims that the economy is in a shambles, and the Global Warming (AB 32-style) laws will make it worse. Just watch the economic indicators, they speak far louder than I ever could or will.
Start with unemployment figures. Then the stock market indices around the world, not just the Dow Jones. Tokyo, Hong Kong, and London are also down. Then look at the consumption of basic energy, in particular oil and natural gas. Note that OPEC has cut production in attempts to prop up the price of oil above $40 per barrel.
Examine the leading economic indicators. Note that the financial markets are in chaos, still, after having billions upon billions pumped into them. Note how many banks failed in the trailing 12 to 18 months.
Then, tell me again how the measures to save-the-world-from-frying-and-drowning are going to put people to work, and kick the economy in the gas. Tell me how higher electricity prices are going to boost the economy. Tell me how higher gasoline and diesel prices, due to bio-fuels, are going to boost the economy. Tell me how it will only cost the consumer $300 more per car to purchase a new car that achieves 49 miles per gallon, as California’s Air Resources Board stated in the AB 32 regulations.
Then, make a convincing argument that the millions upon millions of people who cannot afford new cars, but must buy a used car, will have more money in THEIR pockets from buying more expensive gasoline for 5 years or so, before they have the chance to buy one of those 49-mpg used cars.
Before the AGW proponents shut down every coal-fired power plant in the U.S. and Europe (Poland will NOT be happy about that), please give us all a good plan for replacing that power. You might want to read what I wrote earlier on another WUWT thread about what happens when nuclear power provides more than about 30 percent of the total power in a national grid.
As you seem likely never to be dissuaded from your AGW views, how about you just keep watch, as I will, for the ice to melt, and the beaches to disappear. We have lots of beaches in California, and you can bet there will be plenty of news coverage when they go under.
I will give you one to watch near Los Angeles, California. In Playa del Rey, for example, just south of the breakwater at Marina del Rey, there are dozens of expensive homes right on the beach, approximately 300 feet from the water. At high tide, the homes are only about a foot or so above sea level. Large waves at high tide sometimes swirl the water to within 100 feet of the homes. Keep an eye on those. (For those interested, from Google Maps the latitude/longitude is 33.956105;-118.449526)
I look forward to your, or any other AGW proponent’s, responses on these issues.
Mike Bryant (11:30:45) :
“Wow, Roger, I enjoyed the detailed and passionate response. It sounds like a summation for the jury, devastating. I’m voting guilty.
Mike”
Thank you, sir. You may take your seat in the jury box. [grin]
I’ve followed the debate for nearly a decade now and get a little obsessive from time to time in researching and responding to skeptics/deniers.
jr, is that mentally healthy? You seem to be indulging in obsession, in your own words. Perhaps some other pursuit might make you happier.
I doubt your obsessive compulsion to flail at skeptics/deniers is doing anybody any good, especially yourself. Maybe you need to seek professional help. Certitude is not an attribute of an open mind. Anger is an acid that eats away at the vessel that contains it.
Re sea level change. The alarmist position is well-known. See Algore’s movie. Many is the time I have heard alarmist rants about seas rising to drown Manhattan within the next 50 to 100 years, and in particular flooding the Twin Towers Memorial, as if that particular spot is so sacred as to inflame the Precautionary Principle to red hot status.
But the best studies show that sea levels are rising at minuscule rates of a foot per century, consistent with the rate over last 2,000 years. Nothing to panic about. Nothing to obsess about.
Don’t worry, be happy. If you have such disgust at the level of science you perceive at this site, then why torture yourself about? Find something else to do. Why stick a needle in your own eye? Why stick one in mine, and in the others who enjoy this site?
you shouldn’t accuse others of cherry picking and then try to make a case with short term weather events. the nature magazine can hardly beused as a respected source after the history of handling the hockey stick debate and falsification.
the acceleration of greenland ice loss in 2002-2006 is already over.
http://www.theresilientearth.com/?q=content/greenlands-ice-armageddon-comes-end
even the hadley center opposes alarmist use of such short term data.
antarctic sea-ice levels show a long term uptrend and antarctic temperatures are falling since 1979 (even confirmed by steig and hockeystick mann).
WRT Glaciers and AGW. Suggested reading at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/11/27/glaciers-in-norway-alaska-growing-again/
There is a bit of flak floating around on this thread along the lines of “Skeptics are believers in Conspiracies” as evidence of psychopathology.
I for one, do not hold that there is an active conspiracy behind the AGW Movement.
I take the position that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
And a claim that there is a distinct group of people who are working together to deceive the general public by using the AGW movement as a front for their own nefarious ends is an extraordinary claim. While not beyond the bounds of possibility – I haven’t seen convincing evidence of this proposition.
The position that I do take is that there is a “Collusion of Means” in play. This is a much weaker form of “conspiracy” than the concept of an “active, ongoing, organised conspiracy”.
A Collusion of Means will have organised elements within it, but there is no overall organising structure apart from the chosen “Means”.
Re-posting from http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/15/hansen-on-death-trains-and-coal-and-co2/
This is exemplified by the “Baptists and Bootleggers” concept of the 1920s prohibition era. The Baptists wanted booze banned for religeous reasons. The Bootleggers wanted booze banned to allow for a monopoly market and increased profits. A Collusion of Means, “Booze Banned” to achieve very different and contrary ends. Of course the Baptists and bootleggers would have loathed each other and would not have associated as their means were the same, but the goals contrary.
In the AGW scam context. You have several “Means” in play.
[1] Use of “Catastrophism” to frighten the general public. i.e. Fear as a marketing strategy.
[2] Use of “CAP and Trade” to put a price on Carbon Emissions. i.e. An indirect tax on energy consumption that will be extracted at the final point of sale – like a Value Added Tax, or Goods and Services Tax, but with extremely broad application due to the pervasive use of energy in modern society.
The Colluders include the following possible examples who will benefit from going along with the AGW Movement.
1. Energy companies seeking to make profit from the provision of tax funded windmills.
2. Politicians seeking to get re-elected for “saving the planet – and hence every voter”.
3. Electricity providers seeking to make profit by passing on the costs of carbon credits to their customers at inflated prices to what they paid.
4. Environmentalists, seeking self-validation and the realisation of their ideal of a “Pristine Natural World”.
5. Malthusians seeking reduced human populations.
6. Banks and other trading organisations, seeking to make increased profit from the trading of Carbon.
7. Developing countries (such as China) seeking to get western funded infrastructure (i.e. Hydro Dams) paid for by carbon credits.
8. Psychopaths, and Narcisstic Personality Disordered people seeking power, control, fame, and wealth and importance at the expense of everyone else.
The Collusion of Means is the “Control of CO2 emissions”. No active conspiracy required.
Graeme Rodaughan (13:16:41) :
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_noib_global_sm.jpg
I’m under the impression that the graph that you have just linked to shows that.
[1] The sea level is still rising.
[2] That the rate of rising appears to have stalled over the last 2 to 3 years.
Hi Graeme,
I may be misunderstanding something, but the page title colorado university gives is “Mean Sea Level” and the 50mm change over the 15 year range of the graph does indeed equate to around 3.3mm/year.
Ignore the black linear trend line and look at the blue 60 day smoothed line. Looks like the peak levels since the end of 2005 at +30mm are lower to me. End of 2006 +28mm, end of 2007 +26mm, end of 2008 +25mm.
jrshipley (13:57:15) :
The IPCC has been downsizing it’s rash predictions. However, it’s not that long since they were predicting a 7 meter rise, which of course grabbed the headlines. Science and policy by soundbite. This is why their credibility is crumbling as quickly as their theory.
Brendan H. wrote:
“the press release by the University of West England doesn’t mention anything about diagnosing climate change denial as a mental disorder.”
Oops–you’re right–according to the press release we’re more to be pitied than censured. (I doubt that more-in-sorrow-than-anger attitude will prevail once the conference gets rolling and attendees let down their hair. We’ll see.)
I was basing what I wrote on Brendan O’Neill’s statement:
“The idea that ‘climate change denial’ is a psychological disorder – the product of a spiteful, willful or simply in-built neural inability to face up to the catastrophe of global warming – is becoming more and more popular amongst green-leaning activists and academics.”
I presume he could document this claim with quotations, if asked.
Can anyone tell me where the quotes from Maurice Strong “Is it the only hope for the planet that the industrial nations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring it about?” and Michael Oppenheimer “The only hope for the world is to make sure that there is not another United States” are from? I wan’t to quote them, but cannot find them on the internet and don’t want egg on my face!
I notice that one of the promoters of the conference states that it’s intended to diagnose those who have a pathological resistance to all ecological measures. If that’s the case, and the conference isn’t just about AGW “denial,” that’s less objectionable. Here’s a three-part solution I endorse, spelled out in a book called “Prescription for the Planet,” whose details are outlined in the first reader-review. Here’s the Amazon link:
http://www.amazon.com/Prescription-Planet-Painless-Remedy-Environmental/dp/1419655825/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236568501&sr=1-1
Here’s my own suggestion for a more sustainable society, which I’ve posted a few times on a stock-market website (SeekingAlpha.com):
Since the gov’t. is throwing money at make-work projects and infrastructure improvements, it seems to me that there’s a project that could get under way much faster, with less likelihood of fraud or ineffectiveness than the ones I’ve been reading about. Namely, the gov’t should offer to pay for home-improvement projects for home-owners in exchange for a share of future profits on the sale of the house. This would stimulate lots of economic activity, would upgrade the country’s housing stock, would make life pleasanter for home-owners and their neighbors (who’d live in an upgraded neighborhood), and would be a good investment for the gov’t. in the long run. It would also be politically popular (assuming it would work). (There are certain desirable home improvements that wouldn’t require skilled labor, such as adding fencing, and improving home security, insulation, and earthquake protection. Millions could be hired to do these tasks nearly immediately.)
Janice: I used Google to find the Oppenheimer quote (don’t use quotes around his quote):
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=2&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pushback.com%2Fenvironment%2FEcoFreakQuotes.html&ei=h420Sf2LHZGYsAPAqY2LAQ&usg=AFQjCNE3m1-in5X7gYcEe7hfx38dTL8AHw&sig2=eRSIsYhIg3O0f7i72QMVUw
You could probably do the same with the other quote.
What was it Voltaire said …… “Its dangerous to be right when the authorities are wrong.”
PS to my comment above on governmental jump-start funding for insulation: This technique could also be used to fund attic fans, south-side awnings, white-painted roofs, and heat pump installation. The US needs to cut its energy consumption, and a little governmental nudging–or even frog-marching–is OK to get us there. (provided the solution it is peddling WORKS.)
humm… those guys having a Social Dreaming Matrix event after the conference
http://www.uwe.ac.uk/hlss/research/cpss/events/2009/20090307_facing_climate_changes.shtml
I went to wiki as I didn’t know about this stuff
“Social dreaming is a method for identifying the cultural knowledge and scientific method deployed in the dream – not the oedipal issues experienced by the dreamer. ”
Might be a hint why climastrologists think they use scientific method? 😀
and found that
http://www.socialdreaming.com/
they are selling a DVD $2121… hummm…
don’t know yet what to think about all that…
Dr. Sanity has a post on this post. A Psychiatrists take on the enviros labeling of skeptics as “in denial”.
This is not a game anymore. This is deadly serious business. California, where I Iive and work, has already passed strong legislation to adversely impact all aspects of our once-great economy; this is known as AB 32. I predict it will be known in history as the Bill that Killed California.
Regards,
RHT Seamed Stockings
This sounds like an endorsement for brainwashing if I ever heard it.