Tipping Point In The Media

philincalifornia (15:51:15) :
“Vague low-carbon language and climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in December were relegated to two paragraphs at the communique’s end.”
And why? “Exaggeration leads the coalition of disbelief.”

And Break Out The Woolen Socks (Seattle-Tacoma Area had snow above 500 foot elevation this AM – again!)

I’m at about 220′ elevation on Whidbey Island, and what I thought was frost this morning was actually a dusting of snow, was gone as soon as the sun hit it.

john kirkham (03:28:40) :
As a non scientist may I pose a question that someone on this site may be able to answer. We all know that “the truth will out”, but when. Is it possible to make some sort of prediction of when the GW alarmists will finally have to admit that the facts have proven them to be wrong? Millions of people word wide have their lives impacted by laws petty regulations and taxes excused by the GW scam. Politicians world wide and cross party are in too deep to back out gracefully, and people do not like being duped.Some fore knowledge of a rough date may prove usefull.

Populations are a lot like a herd of cattle when stampeded. A single individual or a small group sense a threat and start moving to excape the threat. Others nearby run because the others near them are running. It is hardwired into our genes to when in doubt follow the crowd. It is a survival imperative that dates back to the savanna’s of Africa. Over all it is safer to run 100 times when there is no threat than it is to not run and spend too much time looking for the source of danger. In the case of the stampeding herd they usually do one of two things. They run far enough that they are either exhausted by the effort, or a distance that experience has shown them is far enough to escape most immediate threats then the pause to look around to analyze the threat and if it still exists. Hunters use this behavior to their advantage. A spooked deer will run at top speed a short distance and then frequently pause and look back to determine if they are being pursued or the danger even exists.
The other response is for the herd to be turned by another perceived threat and begin to circle in on itself and mill aimlessly as no individual is certain where the threat is or if it still exists. They mill anxiously to see if any other individual in the herd is still alarmed and over time they quiet down and assume the threat no longer exists.
People react the same way when they perceive a danger with some minor differences. In the case of humans if they can they tend to confirm the alarm first before stampeding if the threat is distant or not imminent. If you jump out from behind a bush and startle a small group of people the reaction will be instant avoidance. Each will react instinctively to pull away from the threat. In less imminent and immediate cases they will try to evaluate and catagorize the threat and choose a best response. You see this during large scale emergencies, like tornados or wild fires, where folks first instinct is to turn on the TV to check the news, or call a friend to validate the situation of find a high point to view the oncoming threat to analyze for themselves the threat. In the vidio of the WTC collapse you can see the crowd response as the first tower began to come down. First everyone was fascinated and tried to make sense of it ( in the modern vernacular that would be the WTF phase).
Then a few individuals decided it was a threat to them and they were not going to stick around and see and they started moving back first tentatively but you could see a herd response develop in a matter of a couple seconds as those who started to retreat got confirming votes from others that also thought it best to retreat. This crowd dynamic is basically a voting process where when a certain number of the group vote to retreat the rest of the group concludes they may know something I should know, and you get a mass decision to wheel and run, first tentatively but it quickly accelerates to a total group response. This is the fight or flight stage of response. Then you have confirmation as small numbers of individuals turn to luck back and re-evaluate the threat. If they quickly resume flight others take that as another vote that the threat is real. If they stop and slow the group begans to interpret that as a negative vote (no threat or we are out of the danger zone). Again as the number of “skeptics” increases the group as a whole continues to tally these negative votes and when some critical mass is achieved the group perceives that the threat is no longer critical and the stop to re-evaluate.
In my opinion we are just now entering the re-evaluation phase where many have run a short distance from the threat and are beginning to tally up opposing views to confirm if they still need to run.
Humans also weight these votes based on the perceived threat and the credibility of the votes they see. For example when I was in emergency management we had a joking rule of thumb if you are at an emergency scene and you see the fire fighters running don’t stop to ask them what the problem is, make sure they don’t catch up to you.
In that scenario the threat vote of a running emergency responder is a highly credible vote that the threat is real. In a similar situation an obviously hysterical child running from the area would elicit a totally different response as their evaluation of the threat would not be given the same weight as the experienced emergency responder.
We are now seeing that same sort of herd behavior, as for some time the “skeptics” were seen by the crowd as the hysterical child having an inappropriate response. In this case the curious kid that does not run from a threat obvious to an adult. But over time more and more credible votes have been tallied and the crowd is beginning to re-evaluate both the vote count and the credibility of the voters. The AGW votes are losing credibility, as they “protest too much” and are a little too shrill in their warnings of imminent danger. The crowd is tripping its street corner huckster alarm due to this behavior and wondering what that used car salesmen is really trying to sell. Simultaneously they are beginning to increase the crediblity of the votes for the “realists” who are saying the only thing new about the recent climate shifts is the number of folks watch them.
Based on observation of how these sorts of crisis seem to reach a peak and then fade away, I would peg the shift as underway, and the heard will vote very soon that they have run far enough and that running farther will be more dangerous than not running at all.
My guess you will see the shift this fall as other priorities like the economy push the AGW agenda off the table.
Larry

hotrod (09:26:42) :
I agree with your comments (and Roger’s) but I maintain that many/most politicians know full well that the science is not settled, but will push the AGW agenda for as long as possible because it suits their political aims. What they will begin to do under failing popular support for AGW is to allow concessions that enable us to continue as normal ‘while warming is temporarily stalled’, thereby seeming to care about the people etc. Legislation will be deferred because of economic need without admitting error (and in the hope they can still puch it through later. We can only hope that science will then catch up and we will have solid evidence of the natural variation and the actual (small) contribution of manmade sources.