Guest Post by Steven Goddard
Over the last year or so I have been taking an informal survey of a key news metric – Google news searches for the term “global warming.” A year ago, the ratio of alarmist/skeptical articles was close to 100/1. About six months ago, the ratio was 90/10, Two months ago it was 80/20, and today it hit 50/50 for the first time – including the lead skeptical story “A Cooling Trend Toward Global Warming“. One thing that has changed is the rise of blogs written by informed citizens, complemented by the demise of corporate newspapers which make money from keeping people continually alarmed about one thing or another.
Congratulations to Anthony and all the readers for being a big part of this. Democracy in it’s purest form – hope and change we can all believe in.
The top two items from Google news “global warming” search today. The distribution of all stories through the first few search pages was similar in makeup as seen below:
A Cooling Trend Toward Global Warming
The New American – 1 hour ago
With the election of a president who is solidly in the global–warming-alarmist camp – and with many high-level appointees who are bona fide climate-change …
Global warming and climate change: facts and hype Examiner.com
UN global warming stand criticized Delta Farm Press
UN Con on Global Warming Nearly Foiled NewsMax.com
Opposing Views – Atlanta Journal Constitution
House Democrats release draft energy, climate bill
New York Times – 8 hours ago
By DARREN SAMUELSOHN AND BEN GEMAN, Greenwire Democratic leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee today unveiled a 648-page draft global warming …
House Democrats unveil sweeping plan to reshape energy in America MiamiHerald.com
Waxman’s clean energy draft includes cap-and-trade proposals Oil & Gas Journal
US lawmakers present draft bill on ‘clean energy’ AFP
One thing we know with certainty about the future climate is that it will be different from Today. At some point, for natural reasons, the trend will swing back to warming, even if the effects of human activity count for little or nothing. Whether that time is next year, five years from now or fifty, it will happen. One other thing we know with certainty is that at that point, the AGWers will be out in force again. I can only hope that a good portion of the population is fully inoculated against that virus by that time.
Gordon Brown and Kevin Rudd are calling for ‘agreement’ at the G20 and still blaming the climate change as part of the world economic problem.
I guess it is because when it all goes wrong they will not be blamed individually.
E M Smith,
All you folks out there in California are mighty welcome here in Texas. We still have a surplus of cash. We have plenty of fossil fuels and we’re not afraid to use them. We’ve got low taxes, no state income tax and hardheaded people with common sense. We have good manners and an appreciation for visitors that are similarly inclined. You all will enjoy our southern hospitality and with the quiet sun and the turning of the PDO, it might even cool off a little down here. We aren’t getting rid of our air conditioners yet, though.
This also goes for those in Kansas, Wisconsin, Ohio and any other state that has been brought down low by their well-meaning governments.
With apologies to Emma Lazarus:
“Give me (Texas) your tired (of paying exorbitant taxes), your poor (also because of high taxes),
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free (our air is very clean, with just the right amount of CO2 and a surfeit of freedom),
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless (because without freedom, is it really a home?), tempest-tost (the storm of the AGW hoax) to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
You better get here before we put up the fence!
Mike
Brought to you by The Texas Chamber of Commerce
Mike Bryant,
Awww…now why’d ya go and do that?!!! I get homesick enough just thinking about…real BBQ…real Tex Mex…Blue Bell (homemade vanilla, of course)…sopapillas…bluebonnet fields…people that sound like me, no accent …
I’m on my way, just as fast as I can get there…coming HOME!
Reply: Oooooh Luna de Noche ~ charles the moderator y’all
hehehe…
Gotta get some of that Luna de Noche action there…
Charles and Mike Bryant,
Actually, I had this in mind for the Tex Mex:
http://www.joets.com/
The best, by far. (IMHO, of course!)
The only obstacle I found there is that you have to give a little cash under the table to get things done
I’ll scratch your bakshish if you’ll scratch mine . . .
Texas?? nahhhhh
“:Roger Sowell 17.36.47
What was that 60’s song?
“When will they ever learn, when will they ev-v-v-v-er learn….””
‘Where have all the warmers gone, long time passing, where have all the warmers gone, long time ago.
Where have all the warmers gone, gone to Gee Twenty every one.
When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn………..’
(with apologies to Joan Baez)
From the Times piece (about the NYT article) – very nicely put, IMHO:
“The article inside revealed that Professor Dyson – 85 years old and based in Princeton – not only possesses one of the finest noodles on Planet Earth, but also happens to think that most of what Al Gore and his band of Unmerry Men preach amounts to little more than yuppie self-loathing.”
Check this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/apr/01/g20-policing-climate-protest-riot?commentpage=4
Monbiot, leading environmental campaigner and the one most responsible for attacking climate realists, is now defending the skinheads and anarchists who were out to start a fight with the police yesterday.
It’s quite a deliberate lie. Millions saw the protests on TV and saw the police being goaded by anarchists who had made themselves bleed before showing up.
It’s a perfect example of where Monbiot’s sympathies lie. He’s not interested in climate science. He uses environmentalism as a reason to attack our free society.
Another example. The other day Monbiot attacked the latest list of climate rationalists published by the Cato Institute. To mobilise leftwing support against Cato he labelled the thinktank as a ‘rightwing lobby group’.
An outrageous lie. Here is how Cato asked to be labelled on the About section of its website:
Today, those who subscribe to the principles of the American Revolution–individual liberty, limited government, the free market, and the rule of law–call themselves by a variety of terms, including conservative, libertarian, classical liberal, and liberal. We see problems with all of those terms. “Conservative” smacks of an unwillingness to change, of a desire to preserve the status quo. Only in America do people seem to refer to free-market capitalism–the most progressive, dynamic, and ever-changing system the world has ever known–as conservative. Additionally, many contemporary American conservatives favor state intervention in some areas, most notably in trade and into our private lives.
“Classical liberal” is a bit closer to the mark, but the word “classical” connotes a backward-looking philosophy.
Finally, “liberal” may well be the perfect word in most of the world–the liberals in societies from China to Iran to South Africa to Argentina are supporters of human rights and free markets–but its meaning has clearly been corrupted by contemporary American liberals.
The Jeffersonian philosophy that animates Cato’s work has increasingly come to be called “libertarianism” or “market liberalism.” It combines an appreciation for entrepreneurship, the market process, and lower taxes with strict respect for civil liberties and skepticism about the benefits of both the welfare state and foreign military adventurism.
The market-liberal vision brings the wisdom of the American Founders to bear on the problems of today. As did the Founders, it looks to the future with optimism and excitement, eager to discover what great things women and men will do in the coming century. Market liberals appreciate the complexity of a great society, they recognize that socialism and government planning are just too clumsy for the modern world. It is–or used to be–the conventional wisdom that a more complex society needs more government, but the truth is just the opposite. The simpler the society, the less damage government planning does. Planning is cumbersome in an agricultural society, costly in an industrial economy, and impossible in the information age. Today collectivism and planning are outmoded and backward, a drag on social progress.
Market liberals have a cosmopolitan, inclusive vision for society. We reject the bashing of gays, China, rich people, and immigrants that contemporary liberals and conservatives seem to think addresses society’s problems. We applaud the liberation of blacks and women from the statist restrictions that for so long kept them out of the economic mainstream. Our greatest challenge today is to extend the promise of political freedom and economic opportunity to those who are still denied it, in our own country and around the world.
Well, garsh, if’n it’s good enough for the internets, it’s good enough for me!
I wonder what other Google searches would turn up split decisions between skeptics and believers… God? 9/11? Vaccinations? The Holocaust? The Chupacabra? Women make 78 cents on the dollar for the same work? John McCain’s POW record? Obama is a Muslim? The 2000 and 2004 elections?
If this is the sort of “evidence” this side of the debate thinks is valid…
By the way “The New American” may show up in Google’s news search, but it’s an explicit advocacy publication of the John Birch Society, not journalism.
I have read somewhere that Ice Ages start overnight. Ie 1 to 2 years.
This World we call Home is in survival mode. The Sun is cooling, the oceans are cooling. The Planet Earth is trying to keep warm. CO2 levels are increasing. Volcanic activity is increasing, The Magnetic Poles are about to reverse.
New Species will be created – Old Species will die out.
Maybe when 100 foot snowfalls occur in Europe and North America next year the myth of Global Warming (Sorry – Climate Change) will die out.
Excellent post,
I covered it in my blog: http://brianackermann.wordpress.com/2009/04/01/tipping-point-in-the-media/
I see a problem here. Every time someone posts a link to “george” from here and somebody else follows it “george” gets a hit. The more hits “george” gets the more validated he feels and the happier his handlers are.
Looking at the site stats for WUWT, “george” could be getting up to 1 1/2M hits a month just from this site alone. We are helping keep him and the Guardian in business.
I for one am not giving him any more encouragement. It isn’t as though there are any surprises in store when you get over there.
Canadian MSM front page/top-of-the-fold headlines.
See National Post*, Ottawa Citizen**.
The AGW fraud is exposed.
Round up the AGW fraudsters.
…-
“Climate change not all man-made, report says
Cites Natural Causes
Tom Spears, Canwest News Service Published: Thursday, April 02, 2009”
*urlm.in/cali
…-
“Nature, not just man, to blame for global warming: scientists
By Tom Spears, The Ottawa Citizen”
**urlm.in/calj
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/011123.html#comments
OT:
Has anybody read this NOAA report:
Reanalysis of Historical Climate Data for Key AtmosphericFeatures:
Implications for Attribution of Causes of Observed Change
Some key points (for North America):
“The 56-year linear trend (1951 to 2006)
of annual surface temperature is +0.90°C
±0.1°C (1.6°F ± 0.2°F).”
There is only 66% chance that more than half of this warming is the result of human-caused greenhouse gas forcing of climate change.”
“There is no discernible trend in average precipitation since 1951, in contrast to trends observed in extreme precipitation events.”
“It is unlikely that a systematic change has occurred in either the frequency or area coverage of severe drought over the contiguous United States from the midtwentieth century to the present.”
This is peer reviewed material showing several interesting conclusions, just some of them listed above. Has this been discussed on this blog earlier?
RE: Debating skeptics versus pro-AGWers and the media tipping point.
So, from Wiki here is the synopsis of the Chicken Little story with some inserted comments and slight modification:
There are many versions of the story, but the basic premise is that a chicken eats lunch one day, and believes the sky is falling down because an acorn falls on her head (such as low Arctic Ice in 2007). She decides to tell the King (congress, the media and the president), and on her journey meets other animals who join her in the quest. In most retellings, the animals all have rhyming names such as Henny Penny, Cocky Lockey and Goosey Loosey (and Rantin’ Hansen). Finally, they come across Foxy Loxy (portrayed by Al Gore), a fox who offers the chicken and her friends his help.
After this point, there are many endings. In the most famous one, Foxy Loxy eats the chicken’s friends (oh my, watch out James!), but the last one, usually Cocky Lockey, survives long enough to warn the chicken and she escapes (moves on to re-invent the internet with IPv7).
Other endings include Foxy eating them all (or) the characters being saved by a squirrel or an owl and getting to speak to the King (who raises their taxes to prepare for the worst case scenario). One version in which the sky actually falls and kills Foxy Loxy (I don’t advocate this for Al Gore, it’s only a fairy tale).
Depending on the version, the moral changes. In the “happy ending” version, the moral is not to be a “Chicken”, but to have courage (the pro-AGWers). In other versions the moral is usually interpreted to mean “do not believe everything you are told” (the skeptics).
It could well be a cautionary political tale: The Chicken jumps to a conclusion and whips the populace into mass hysteria, which the unscrupulous fox uses to manipulate them for his own benefit (speaking fees, Nobel Prize, getting to talk to lots of hot looking Hollywood starlets attending lavish fund-raisers).
The End
nelsonleith (02:32:52)
Does anyone have any clue what this person is talking about? Perhaps the poster? Unlikely?
Mike Bryant (18:55:53) :
“Brought to you by The Texas Chamber of Commerce”.
Mike, pardner, you forgot to warm ’em about Austin. Folks, Austin is to Texas what a “play-date” is to braggin’ rights, no-helmets, sandlot baseball.
Austin reminds me of Phoenix. And remember, now
Phoenix is just Minneapolis, pretending it is Los Angeles.
Henry
“Climate change not all man-made, report says”
“Cites Natural Causes”
The National Post Tom Spears, Canwest News Service Published: Thursday, April 02, 2009
http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/story.html?id=1453831
It appears as though yet another MSM paper is softening the field for eventual disclosure. AGW – an act of the imagination?
Keith Minto (21:57:30) :
Pete Seeger. Link worth reading:
http://www.fortunecity.com/tinpan/parton/2/where.html
Thanks,Ric…all I could think of was the half English,half German version by JB.
It just gets better!….
“Where have all the warmers gone,gone to London every one.
When will they ever earn, when will they ever earn………”
Life after the tipping point ??
From tomorrow’s Guardian no less:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/03/g20-gordon-brown-global-economy
“The transatlantic compromise between America and Europe led to a jump in shares in London and New York. The FTSE index closed up more than 4% at 4,124.97. The deal won praise from business leaders, as well as anti-poverty campaigners, but dismayed the green lobby with its lack of measures to combat climate change.
British government officials lost their battle to include a commitment to spend a substantial share of the economic stimulus on low-carbon recovery projects.
Vague low-carbon language and climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in December were relegated to two paragraphs at the communique’s end.”
Henry,
Austin is NOT mentioned in polite company. I spent too many crazy days and nights there in my youth.
I can still spend an enjoyable evening on 6th St. Good music, cold beer… all in all the better part of Austin.