I’m off this weekend and part of next week– talk quietly and politely amongst yourselves. Don’t make me come back here.
If you have something worth posting on the front page, flag a moderator. Those that want to do guest posts are welcome to do so also. Again, flag a moderator for attention. I’ll update when I can but I have quite a busy schedule in the next week that will keep me offline for extended periods.
– Anthony
I think almost all the world’s starvation problems are political in nature, and sending money to poor farmers won’t help.
The FAO is advocating sending more food to poor countries, not money. This in fact makes the problem worse by reducing the incentive for farmers in these countries to grow more food or even the same amount of food in the future.
What is needed is money in the hands of the hungry and there are various ways to do this. Not least funding basic environmental improvements.
But that would make the UN’s FAO irrelevant, and heaven forbid get people working and make them self reliant, as well as injecting much needed cash into these economies.
K (21:44:26) :
So what’s scarier? The most hysterical AGW projections, or the fact that mainstream science has been corrupted by postmodern politics?
The latter, there is a long history of “we’re all doomed and it’s going to happen next Tuesday” but normally it’s the vulnerable who fall for these this time it’s the very people who should be asking the difficult questions. Questions like how? Why? and particularly can you prove it?
Doesn’t this just sum up the present situation on climate change?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6916648.ece
FatBigot (21:45:08) :
the topic was vaguely touched the other day on this thread, with regard to British fogs and their disappearance. I associate fog with cold, adding a little to your theory.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/13/el-nino-gaining-strength/
Hey, denialists, a la Lindzen, have you voted?
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/proveit.aspx
The no seem to be stalled ( like the ice). Has it reached saturation of available votes? it used to be 3 no to 1 yes. Of course schools visiting the museum will be voting yes, because the thing is guiding them to “yes”, but where have the denialists gone?
Eddie Murphy (20:51:18) :
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/6554952/UN-food-summit-fails-before-it-begins.html
The leaked World Food Summit draft declaration falls short of a UN goal of eradicating hunger by 2025. Instead, leaders are expected to to sign a watered down declaration in Rome next week that calls for vague increases in aid
mr.artday (21:20:13) :
There seems to be a divergence of aims in the U.N., given that the I.P.C.C. is working to reduce the world’s population by some 95% in order to save the planet.
About 20 years ago, a friend of mine was working part time on an effort called “The Hunger Project.” It was an NGO effort to highlight the truth about agricultural production and the fact that large numbers of people inthe world starve amid plenty. They produced a glossy brochure with some convincing facts and figures.
Now, 20 years later, the U.N. apparently aims to achieve what that brochure said could be achieved within 10 years, by 2025. They and the worlds major league governments have frittered away the warm years and we stand on the edge of an abyss of cold and deprivation.
The realpolitik of the situation is that the owners of the surreal wealth in the world see their position jeapardized by developing nations who won’t play their surreal game according to their surreal rules. They are stalling for time. We, the citizens of the developed nations meekly allow the banks and corporate governments of our countries to rob us blind to prop up their failed system of wealth partition. Why? Because we are successfully frightened by them through the media into believing there is no other way to organize our lives. The agencies we finance to solve the problems faced by the worlds deprived and oppressed fail us through their inability to surmount the obstacles created by political and financial interest.
The famous TT motorcycle racer Joey Dunlop saw through this. Faced with bureacracy and inertia in his attempt to help the starving and desperate people in Bosnia during the Serbian Genocide, he borrowed a huge truck, drove it round Ireland collecting food and clothes, and drove it across all borders to where it was needed. He didn’t take no for an answer, and nobody dared to shoot him. This event followed his work for charity where he would load up his race transporter before each season, and drive it to Romania loaded with medecine and other aid.
Joey died in a street race in Tallinn. We need to take up the torch in his memory and follow his anarchic example.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joey_Dunlop
Is the tide turning in the Hotheadbed of AGW? – (Britain)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6916648.ece
And I quote;
“Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office, said that growing awareness of the scale of the problem appeared to be resulting in people taking refuge in denial.”
They (the politicians/met officers(( towing the line, who pays the piper?))) are surely the one’s in denial, the more they push, the more ‘us proles’ push back, its a law of physics.
Because the growing scientific evidence points to natural warming in the last part of the C20th, the Met Office don’t get it!!
Refuge in Denial! Its enough to make you swear(snip).
Perhaps the people ‘get it’ and then the politicians will have to ‘get real’ , I await the time when the Met Office issues a ‘we were wrong’ statement, though I don’t hold my breath about it, though I do believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden and that pigs maybe some day will learn unpowered flight.
growing awareness of the scale of the
problemlying appeared to be resulting in people taking refuge in denial.Fixed!
DaveE.
Ric Werme asks “What timeline do you expect to pass before the mainstream media starts talking about the demise failure of global warming?”
The politicians will be the last to know, closely preceded by the environmental editors of the serious papers. I won’t believe the tide has turned until a stand-up comic dares make a joke about the Maldive Islanders.
Postmodern politics is scarier. It has been said that it could lead to a halving of the world’s population. In the world, postmodern ethics gives the world’s thugs an equal seat at the table. Like, why shouldn’t everyone have nuclear bombs? We have them, right? America used them, right?
But I’m not too worried about the long term picture in the developed world. Postmodernism started in the 60s by a small number of brains immeasurably superior to its present day adherents, so there is only so far the current generation of oldies in positions of authority can go with it (ironic!).
These days, a new generation of brains are already thinking beyond it–we’re entering a post-postmodern phase. Perhaps it is not obvious because they don’t have the big institutions speaking for them, however, they are out there and they’ll figure out how to get stuff done without funding from the big institutions. Instead they’ll find each other individually and quietly start forming some new science and culture.
Post post modernism will probably gain enough power to be fairly mainstream in about 20 years, a lot sooner than any IPCC projection of +4C.
It is bizarre that groups of people in the West believe we can “end hunger now!” and “stop climate change!” and get “peace in the Middle East!” and so on. Initially, 30 years ago, these were noble intentions, but pretty soon it became obvious that these problems have staggering complexity. The trouble with postmodernist thought is that it never managed to recognise the complexity.
I’m tempted to suggest that AGWs be appropriately labelled
“complexity deniers!”
I think it wont change until some skeptical politician administration will emerge as the result of elections, preferably in US.
Gene Nemetz (21:55:08)
I doubt the ice N or siberia is compacting because the Ice E of Svalbard has basically thinned to almost nothing and it’s the same water currents. But I have no practical experience or knowledge about this.
NZ Willy (21:19:44) : AMSR-E Sea Ice Extent is sure bottled up at the moment. It’s flatlined a few times, now for 3 days.
Close eyeballing, it’s evident that such flatlining has NOT happened before at this time of year, at least not during the lifetime of this form of recording. Neither would I expect it in the season of most rapid cooling and refreezing. And don’t we know anecdotally that the Arctic has NOT been warm this last summer? The fact that the red line is now into “worse than expected” “worst ever” range does make me concerned. Now if you wanted to falsify data, you’d do it in little bits, running up to Copenhagen… but I cannot assert that this has happened here without some other clear evidence.
anna v: I too noticed that the Science Museum votes did not seem to be increasing and wondered if there was a dog hidden inside the machine to eat the homework… can someone keep track please, it would be interesting…
Vicky Pope of the Met Office also said “people see the problem being used to charge them more taxes.” Got it in one, Vicky!
It is astounding that there are people who want to pump material into the atmosphere.
Whilst the cause of the onset of ice ages is based on a number of theories one is that cooler summers cause prolonged winters and therfore there is more snow cover which reflects sunlight resulting in a gradual process which results eventually in ice ages.
The next time someone talks about peer reviewed papers you can of course mention Einstein but of course look up James Croll who wrote papers on the causes of climate change whilst at university, working as a janitor.
My thanks to Bill Bryson and his book A short history of everything which is a very good read and shows how important Geologists have been in unravelling our history and advances in how the planet works.
Skeptical & Denialists?
Always the AGW stuff turns everything it gets it’s hands on upside down.
The Warmists say we are overheating and will cook and drown.
The Skeptics say prove it, show us your calcualtions.
The Warmists, instead of answering the questions shoot the messenger, calling them heretical deniers.
If a Skeptic were truly in denial, they would have to deny what is in front of us daily in a cooling world in order to accept the Warmists claims at face value.
Lucy Skywalker (02:42:09) :
How many satellite sensors have we lost this year?
How many planes have we lost this year, helicopters included?
TonyB 00:19:16:
“….Romans fighting Vikings, James Hansen and the IPCC…”
My money’s on the Romans beating all three at once!
Seriously, though, I followed your link and read Mr Id’s fascinating article. I would have thought WUWT readers would find it interesting also, if those wonderful – and good-looking – moderators could persuade Mr Watts to re-publish it here.
Andrew (21:11:07) : Thanks for that link. I always wanted that.
Lucy (02:44:41) – there’s no need for excessive paranoia. The thread below has been very active and there’re a couple of widgets linked to count the voting.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/23/and-then-what-happens/#more-12043
You can also see for example:
http://wermenh.com/proveitraw.html
There was a hockey stick jump in warmist votes, possibly after Monbiot’s we’re losing piece and the graph does show some other issues.
Two points to bear in mind – 1) it’s more than likely that the alarmists will win the poll 2) science is not and never has been a democracy – a prove it poll on evolution v creationism would likely weigh in in creationism’s favour, as I’m sure they’ll be quick to point out.
The poll is purely political and despite early shenanigans from both sides (although the skeptics one was pre-announced) and the scope for egg on face for the museum, it will achieve very little whatever the outcome. The same is true for the Times poll which will only cause efforts to ‘re-educate’ the masses to be increased.
Eddie Murphy (20:51:18) :
The UN is a totally corrupt organization and it’s spreading corruption via the NGO’s working under the UN Umbrella into the countries where they operate.
The fat cats in charge fill their pockets and the people in the field are left frustrated.
In many cases the NGO’s work with corrupt contractors who pay back huge parts of the budgets to private persons in the chain.
What’s left are some “symbolic” show case projects but the big problems are not solved despite the fact that big budgets have been made available.
In Afghanistan we now have a situation where NGO’s and private contractors who are hired to provide security and logistics are buying off the Taliban.
So our funding is supporting the enemy we are fighting.
Only a very small part of the resources and the money arrives with the people who need it.
Many of the UN NGO’s operate outside their original field of operation and have turned into political organizations.
If you look at the budgets that have been made available to Oxfam, hunger in the world should have been eradicated years ago.
The UN is using her budgets to generate misery instead of solving it.
I think we need an entirely different approach to solve the problems but that requires big changes in our own Government and it’s policies.
If we want to solve something, private initiative is the best way to go.
Every dollar transferred into the hands of the UN is a wasted dollar and as things look now, it’s used against us.
Lucy Skywalker (02:42:09) :
NZ Willy (21:19:44) : AMSR-E Sea Ice Extent is sure bottled up at the moment. It’s flatlined a few times, now for 3 days.
Over at http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ there has been no update since 09/11. It does look odd, unless of course the Russians have found ways of keeping the waters open. Interestingly both the Russian and Alaskan oil fields are in areas of late freezing water. Considering the efforts and expertise that go into ice roads, it would not be unreasonable for the oil organisations to find ways of delaying the freeze up. However, creating ice roads is all about augmenting the freeze up, which has to be easier than holding back the freeze up. However how about the following:
http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/safety/ice/index.html
“Schools of fish or flocks of waterfowl can also adversely affect the relative safety of ice. The movement of fish can bring warm water up from the bottom of the lake. In the past, this has opened holes in the ice causing snowmobiles and cars to break through.”
Luke Warmer (03:26:54) :
🙂
the museum poll
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/proveit.aspx
at the time of this post
* 4516 counted in so far
* 7265 counted out so
at (22:22:38) :
# 4504 counted in so far
# 7253 counted out
Note the reversal of previous rates:
14 new in
12 new out
when it was a factor of three in the rate of out to in, in favor of out a while ago.
I put my money on schoolchildren walked through the exhibit and guided how to vote