From NetNewsledger.com
Has Climate Change had its “Ten Minutes of Fame”?
Written by James Murray
THUNDER BAY – Yesterday was the International Day of Action on Climate Change. In Ottawa, cold weather kept the crowd from hitting the 5,000 people that organizers hoped. About 500 people showed up. In Calgary, a snowstorm dumped wet heavy snow on the city.
On Google, unlike past climate change events, there was not a special logo created. On the front pages of major newspapers across Canada the major stories were not about the looming climate crisis.
In Winnipeg, about 200 people made it to a rally at the Manitoba Legislature. In Vancouver, a city steeped in protest, the crowd was estimated at 5000. Across Canada interest in the day of action appeared less than ever.
Could it be that the fire is smoldering out on the issue of climate change? Maybe in an era where ever shorter attention spans want to shift to other topics the climate issue has had its “ten minutes of fame”?
On the popular news site www.bourque.com the climate issue is not mentioned. This morning, on Google News, there isn’t a mention of the day of protest on the top stories either. The front page of the Toronto Star is void of climate change stories too.
Over on www.wattsupwiththat.com a website that over the past several years has dug into the issue, the comment is that global warming and climate change are “urban legends”. Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D. writes, “I contend that the belief in human-caused global warming as a dangerous event, either now or in the future, has most of the characteristics of an urban legend. Like other urban legends, it is based upon an element of truth. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas whose concentration in the atmosphere is increasing, and since greenhouse gases warm the lower atmosphere, more CO2 can be expected, at least theoretically, to result in some level of warming”.
It is, perhaps causing some in the movement to ramp up their rhetoric to try to gain more attention. Elizabeth May and the Green Party recently took the approach that the only way to get the message out is to state, “Your Parents F*cked Up The Planet”. May’s justification is that “Our culture is steeped in the F-word”.
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“In praise of scepticism
Claims over global warming are not accepted by all
A POINT OF VIEW
In a light-hearted essay, Clive James takes a look at Montaigne, golf-ball crisps and our attitude towards climate change sceptics.
What do I know? Montaigne asked himself, and in answering that question during the course of several volumes of great essays he touched on many subjects. But he never touched on the subject of the golf-ball potato crisp.
As far as I know, this essay I am writing now is the first ever devoted to the subject of Montaigne’s relationship to the golf-ball potato crisp, and my essay starts from my certain knowledge that he never ate one. Or anyway my almost certain knowledge. There’s a difference, which I shall try to bring out.
But more of the golf-ball potato crisp in a moment.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8322513.stm
I was talking to a co-worker this morning (16F -9C) who favors Cap and Trade legislation. I asked about his support if it turned out that carbon emissions are not causing global warming and that the climate was cooling. His reply;
“We still need to reduce greenhouse gases, they can’t be good for the planet.”
The AGW mindset is here to stay, even without AGW.
vg (01:57:10) :
Dont mean to be snarky etc but I think NH ice needs to be looked at seriously at this time. The only sensible ones are DMI who are NOT prepared to put up trash data since October 1. Briefly saw DMI 2 days ago it showed completely trashy data with a disclaimer that it should not be relied on. They have pulled the site again. Meanwhile CT, Jaxa Norsex continue using this data Please….
Norsex uses the SSMI data which had problems with the particular satellite that was in use this summer, NSIDC switched to a different SSMI satellite while CT and JAXA use a different satellite altogether (ASMR-E). The problem seems to be confined to DMI and whichever satellite they are using.
It just occurred to me that what we’re seeing is a outburst of Puritanism. Sexual and social mores are no longer socially viable outlets for the puritan condemnation of human behavior, so people with that bent have moved into ecology. Eco-puritans decry anything that relates to human progress, and since CO2 is related most aspects of that, it has become the obvious target.
James Murray doesn’t really have much of a clue, does he?
He says: The issue of climate change deserves better than the hype it is getting. Actually, what it deserved was to go the way of all failed hypotheses instead of being dug up and given new life, turning it into a Frankensteinian monster running roughshod over the scientific process and threatening to turn modern man back to the stone age. What the “issue” of climate change (meaning, of course, the pseudo-issue of manmade climate change) deserves now is exactly what it is getting – repeated thrashings, ridicule, and yes, boredom.
Then he says:
The issue of conserving our resources is a key to our future. However in the rush to action, the most important component, the people could be ending up left behind. Here, of course, like a lot of warmists, he conflates the pseudo- issue of climate change with the real (though often overblown) issue of conservation.
In “the rush to action” it would seem that it is actually the politicians who are left behind, acting on a pseudo-issue which people no longer care about.
anna v (03:44:21) :
Perry (01:53:48) :
OT, but AMSR-E has “glitched”, it would appear.
A “U” turn from 7,527,652 down to 7,447,813 square kilometres of Arctic ice. http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
If it is not a glitch in data processing, there must be very high winds blowing there. Remember for the area they count 15% of the ice so there is a lot of space for compaction.
ASMR-E has two data passes per day, the one you refer to is the preliminary one, typically the second one which is updated around 10am EDT is significantly changed (at this time of year usually an increase).
Heard on the CBC this morning:
Some ad agency person has apparently written a book saying that climate change is real and claims that he did his research and this is the truth. Some of his claims appear to be the same old same old:
a) Skeptics are in the pay of the energy industry.
b) Most scientists agree that climate change is real; no debate necessary.
I didn’t get this persons name, but I’m disappointed in the CBC for being so gullible.
It appears that the biggest problem confronting science is human nature. The croud out yelling about Global Warming will just as easily yell about Global Cooling when that day comes. They will NOT be attentive to reasonable policies proposed by intelligent, thoughtful experts. They will want to impose their own excessive socialist fixes. Suppose we’re now experiencing the end of the latest intergalcial. Can you imagine what bright ideas they’ll have? Can you imagine the total chaos they’ll create? People with too much wealth and time on their hands tend to take up causes. Let us hope that if the weather is changing, if the end of the Global Warming scare is upon us, that the average low temperatures of the next 30 years are not too extreme and that humanity matures a little in the mean time. The most frightening aspect of too many people with too much time on their hands is total chaos.
Has Climate Change had its “Ten Minutes of Fame”?
Andy Warhol would allot another five minutes.
Anecdotally, I have noticed that the usual Global Warming crowd have seemingly given up on the warming. They are still against coal, cars and commercialism but lately they have been citing smog, acid rain and dependence on foreign oil as their justification.
People are noticing inconvenient weather facts, such as..
On October 3 at 9:27 p.m., Trail Ridge Road, which crosses Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park, closed for the season, nearly 3 weeks earlier than the average closing date of October 23.
AGW will not likely end in a big showdown, where the AGW promoters are routed and shamed out of the public square.
Instead the people who sort of tagged along will get bored with the obviously wrong predciations and jsut sort of wonder off.
The parasitic promoters will want it to simply die quietly, so as to avoid the tough questions.
The hard core true believers will hang in there, joining 911 ‘truthers’, ufoolgists and those who beleive in ghosts or a 6000 year old Earth.
The recent two blogs about new US weather records showing that it’s cold this October reminded me about the graph, often shown on ICECAP, of the record high temperatures for the last century, illustrating the cyclical nature of climate, and showing that the 1930’s were quite warm.
Has someone put together a similar graph for record low temperatures, but on an inverted scale, so that the highs and lows graphs could be shown together? (Actually, since Pielke et al have demonstrated that urban development affects low temperatures with a warming bias, it might be more accurate to show record low maximums, rather than record low minimums.)
Meanwhile back at the ranch, has the AMSR-E sattelite sensor failed? It seems to be showing the same signs as the other sensor before it packed up.
Let´s see after Copenhaguen how much of its fame is left. As Climate Change it is not “their” goal but Social Change and Owners of the Planet Change, as long as the Copenhaguen agreement is achieved it doesn´t matter fame at all.
The question would be instead: How long will the new world order last, 5 years as the 3rd.reich or 75 years as the communist revolution?.
The people are guilty, the are bored.
Now that the activists have managed to get people trying to solve the problem, we’ll start to see the nature of the problem more clearly. We’ll start to see how hard it is. This changes the emotional tone. Consider this from history:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/3982243.stm
That would be fifteen minutes of fame. But this is Canada, so anything goes.
What, Canadians don’t know how to use a hockey stick?
well, with McIntyre and McKittrick both being from the great white north, we know how to break them anyway.
I dropped Liz a line over the Watermelon party advertising, here is her response:
“I am proud of the youth active in the Young Greens. For that matter I am proud of youth engaged in any political party and in work in social movements — whether Amnesty International, Engineers without Borders, Oxfam, Greenpeace, Sierra Youth Coalition, World Vision, Otesha, the list is long.
We clearly need more youth engagement. Young people are increasingly not voting. The youth-run group “Apathy is Boring” has been trying to increase voter turn out among youth. It is not easy.
Reduced voter turn out is a national crisis, with only 58% of Canadians voting in 2008. And many of those not voting are under 30. Every political party should be reaching out to encourage youth participation.
Young people have the most to lose from bad policies. The climate crisis threatens the next generation and their children directly, and potentially catastrophically. The staggering fiscal deficit threatens them as well.
Obscenity is a subjective concept. Our culture is steeped in the F-word. John Baird used it on Toronto. (He did apologize). Trudeau may have said it, but it came out “fuddle duddle.” The Young Greens have used a version with asterisk inserted to make a point. To get more youth engaged. And what they are saying is fundamentally true. How many of us in the boomer generation can honestly dispute the fact that our generation has done an unacceptable amount of damage to this planet?
How should youth respond? Go to the mall? Do drugs? Party til the whole mess goes away? Or get active and engaged and call for meaningful engagement in the political process?
I am proud of them for choosing the latter.
I am a parent and a grandparent. I do not take their slogan personally. The real obscenity is that so many in leadership are prepared to ignore the climate crisis, and ignore the compelling warnings of science that this crisis threatens our very civilization.
As leader, I will not ask Young Greens to apologize or stand down. They are engaged. They developed the website and slogan to make a point.
They have my full support.
Sincerely,
Elizabeth May, O.C.
Leader
Green Party of Canada
1-866-868-3447”
I felt that she deserved a reply, so:
Is pitting the impressionable youth of today against their parents and grandparents, whose goal in life was to pay their bills and hopefully provide a better life for their kids really what you hope to accomplish?
Have your views stopped you from buying anything that uses plastic? How many things do you own that have “Made in China” labels on them? How about anything produced that uses fossil fuels? Using air travel? How about equipping your residence with total renewable power? Growing all your own food? Using a composting toilet? Getting rid of your computer? Cell phone? Buy all your clothes 2nd hand from Frenchys? Did you use disposable diapers for your kids? Have you personally actually started to consume less? No, well I’m not really surprised and I doubt that any of your followers have taken any drastic steps that would require a massive change of lifestyle either, despite all of your rhetoric.
You have spent your entire life coddled and nurtured by the very economic and scientific progress you seem to despise, as have the members of your youth movement. I seriously doubt if any of them or you has gone to bed cold and hungry on a regular basis, all brought to you courtesy of fossil fuels. But I, and the rest of my generation should just stand out of the way and be OK with it as you pass that twisted thought process on to the next generation. I don’t know if you and your party are closer to those that used to be in power in Germany, or the USSR. Either way, trying to place a wedge between the generations by pointing to some unreachable Utopian future is an old and rather dirty political trick, you’ve learned that lesson well.
As for Global Warming, oops re-branded to Climate Change over the last couple of years as it stopped getting warmer, you might want to go back and start at the beginning again, as your recent publishing effort, for Dummies, contained some rather basic errors, in addition to missing some rather relevant facts. Humans are not in charge of the weather, and the climate has always changed. Just down the road from me is Drumlin Heights School, built on top of a drumlin that was deposited here during the retreat of glaciers from the last ice age. How stable do you think climate was back then? And no man-made influence required.
Here is a little quote, but you won’t like it. http://www.capitalism.net/grtoxic.htm
“Perhaps of even greater significance is the continuous and profound distrust of science and technology that the environmental movement displays. The environmental movement maintains that science and technology cannot be relied upon to build a safe atomic power plant, to produce a pesticide that is safe, or even to bake a loaf of bread that is safe, if that loaf of bread contains chemical preservatives. When it comes to global warming, however, it turns out that there is one area in which the environmental movement displays the most breathtaking confidence in the reliability of science and technology, an area in which, until recently, no one–not even the staunchest supporters of science and technology–had ever thought to assert very much confidence at all. The one thing, the environmental movement holds, that science and technology can do so well that we are entitled to have unlimited confidence in them is forecast the weather–for the next one hundred years!”
At least I raised my kids not to swallow the bait whole, to read the whole document before they sign, take what the mainstream media says with a grain of salt and to be skeptical of anyone whose argument starts with “it’s in the best interests of future generations”, as Mencken said, “The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.”.
I can only hope that most parents have done the same and that your organization’s casual use of obscenities in the political arena does you more harm than good.
PS. Waste of breath I know, but you probably think that we need more Rachel Carson’s and John Muir’s, and that DDT, despite the millions of lives it’s saved and could have saved in the developing world, is a horrible invention. I think Norman Borlaug did more for humanity than the entire environmental movement combined, but you probably believe his work did more harm than good.
Martin Brumby (02:06:36) : “When there is a General Election in the UK in May, which party can I vote for, to register a protest against the really scary thing…? All the major Political Parties vie with themselves to be greener (= more stupid) than the next.”
Vote for any minor party that takes a skeptical stance. When one of the major parties sees a wholesale defection in that direction, they’ll have to change their tune.
UK Sceptic (02:01:26) : “Sounds like the message is getting out at last. I wonder how long it will take to percolate through those thick venal skulls of the politicians driving this BS?”
It could be some time. They’re all hoping to win the “UC Twit of the Year” contest. Or a Nobel Prize, if there are any left over at the bottom of the Cracker Jack box.
Cassandra King (08:06:30) :
Meanwhile back at the ranch, has the AMSR-E sattelite sensor failed? It seems to be showing the same signs as the other sensor before it packed up.
There are no signs of the AMSR-E satellite behaving in the same way as the SMMI did last year, those images showed many missing swaths etc., nothing similar is visible on the ASMR-E images. Look back over previous years and you’ll see fluctuations, pauses in growth/decrease etc., it’s to be expected.
Larey (06:32:04) :
I was talking to a co-worker this morning (16F -9C) who favors Cap and Trade legislation. I asked about his support if it turned out that carbon emissions are not causing global warming and that the climate was cooling. His reply;
“We still need to reduce greenhouse gases, they can’t be good for the planet.”
The AGW mindset is here to stay, even without AGW.
Not if the inglorious FACTS are submitted for even the most stubborn to chew on. There is a huge repository of data on the effects of CO2 fertilization of plant life. It was in fact during the Devonian Period when CO2 was peaking at 1800-2200 ppm that the Earth’s first forests began to flourish.
Ask your friend why horticulturalists and florists regularly pump CO2 into greenhouses. There is lots of research, much from the FACE (Free-Air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment) studies around the US. CO2 demonizers might be shocked by this link:
http://aspenface.mtu.edu/
Hate to rain on the party, but the governments of most of the people posting here (including my own) have just spent billions and trillions bailing out their respective banks. Most of that money will be repaid, but what isn’t will have to be made up from new taxes.
Most of those same governments still have a lot of their credibility tied up in this AGW scam, and the disasterbaters continue to cheer them on loudly.
CO2 is the ultimate sin tax, it can be levied on just about any activity a government cares to target. So until Copenhagen is done and dusted, I’d be keeping the champagne on ice. Here’s hoping for a nice snow blizzard there to cool their ardour.
Mitchel44 (09:24:09) Give Elizabeth May, O.C. the following link:
http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/germany/sp001630/peter.html