Note: I posted this originally early this morning, something happened with wordpress.com hosting (I’m not sure what) and it disappeared, here it is again. – Anthony
Christopher Monckton of Brenchley replies to readers
I am most grateful to the many kind readers of www.wattsupwiththat.com who have commented on my open letter to the Australian Prime Minister. If you want to see a real “hockey-stick” graph, just look at the record of this wonderful website’s monthly hit-rates over the past couple of years.
May I answer some of the scientific and economic points raised by your readers?
Several readers raised the question whether the function ΔT = (4.7 ± 1) ln(C/C0) (in Celsius degrees) that I have derived for the rate of warming predicted by the IPCC in response to any given proportionate increase in CO2 concentration takes account not only of the direct forcing from CO2 enrichment of the atmosphere but also of any net-positive temperature feedbacks.
In fact the Monckton function does take account of feedbacks as well as forcings. Broadly speaking, the IPCC assumes (though this is almost certainly a monstrous exaggeration) that temperature feedbacks approximately triple any externally-forced initial warming. For the sake of minimizing any dispute, and solum ad argumentum (only for the sake of argument), I have simply calculated the warming the IPCC’s way, exaggerations and all.
One can test the function by calculating that 4.7 ln 2 (for a doubling of CO2) equals 3.26, the precise equilibrium temperature change, in Celsius degrees, predicted by the IPCC as its central estimate. For US and UK readers, the Monckton function in Fahrenheit degrees is ΔT = (8.5 ± 1.8) ln(C/C0).
My purpose in deriving this function was to facilitate instant calculation of the equilibrium temperature change predicted by the IPCC for any given change in CO2 concentration, without having to take separate account of the magnitude of the CO2 radiative forcing, of the Planck no-feedbacks climate sensitivity parameter, or of the sum of climate-relevant positive and negative temperature feedbacks.
A related question, also raised by several readers, was whether I should have taken account of the fact that not all feedbacks are linear. Since the IPCC assumes that all feedbacks are either linear or close enough to linear to be linearizable, I have adopted the same assumption, again solum ad argumentum, even though it is clear that the water vapor feedback, for instance, cannot be strictly linear.
Another reader has asked why I have calculated the effect of implementing the Copenhagen Accord only as far as 2020. This is the time-horizon for the Accord. The effect of the Accord over ten years would be to forestall warming of just 0.2 C° (0.35 F°) forestalled even if everyone complies fully. This outcome is so minuscule that extending the analysis beyond that date would be pointless, not least because by ten years from now it will be blindingly obvious to everyone a) that the climate is simply not warming anything like as fast (if at all) as the IPCC had ambitiously predicted, and b) that compliance with Copenhagen was little better than compliance with Kyoto. By 2020, the climate scare will be all over bar the shouting, and no one will be cutting CO2 emissions any more.
Another query was about whether I should have done the calculation on the basis of 7.5% of total CO2 emissions, rather than 7.5% of the additional 20 ppmv that we will emit on the trend of the past decade unless we cut emissions. Here, the enquirer is confusing emissions with concentration. CO2 emissions are rising at a near-exponential rate, but over the past decade CO2 concentration has risen at a strictly linear rate of a fraction over 2 ppmv/year. The IPCC’s case is that without our emissions CO2 concentration would stabilize, and would only drop back to its pre-industrial 278 ppmv after hundreds of years: therefore it is appropriate – solum ad argumentum, as ever – to hoist the IPCC with its own petard and to attribute all of the 2 ppmv/year increase in CO2 concentration to our current emissions, from which the calculation in the letter to Mr. Rudd follows.
Dr. Patrick Michaels, one of the most distinguished commentators on the climate scam, has done some excellent work demonstrating that over the past 30 years the relationship between CO2 emissions and CO2 concentration has remained broadly constant at approximately 14-15 billion tons CO2 emitted per 1 ppmv increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Therefore, if we ignored the IPCC’s belief – which certainly does not represent the consensus in the scientific literature – that CO2 lingers in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, then the correct calculation would be to assume that without our current emissions CO2 concentration would fall swiftly back to 278 ppmv from its present 388 ppmv – a drop of 110 ppmv. Then, if we saved 7.5% of total emissions, we should reduce CO2 concentration by 7.5% of 110 ppmv, or around 8 ppmv, in which event the warming forestalled over the next ten years would be 0.1 C°, still not worth all those trillions.
Next, a reader says he will not believe the UN’s computer models until they are capable of modeling all of the natural as well as anthropogenic causes of “global warming”. However, even then modeling is of limited value, because the climate is not merely complex and non-linear but mathematically chaotic. Therefore, as Lorenz (1963) proved in the landmark climate paper that founded chaos theory, unless we know the initial state of the climate at any chosen moment to a precision that is forever unattainable in practice, reliable, very-long-term weather prediction is not available “by any method” – and “very-long-term”, as the Met Office in the UK has learned to its cost in each of the past three summers and in the current winter, means just a few weeks. It is better to rely upon observation and measurement than upon models.
Which leads to my next answer. A reader says he wishes I had supplied references to support my statements in the closing paragraphs of the letter that the measured radiative forcing from changes in cloud cover between 1983 and 2001 was at least five times greater than that from CO2. The forcing from CO2 over that period – the only period warming that we could have influenced even in theory – was just 0.8 Watts per square meter. The forcing from decreased cloud cover, expressed as the sum of 19 annual means, was 4.5 Watts per square meter.
A recent blog posting by me at www.scienceandpublicpolicy.org explains the theory behind the radiative influence of changes in cloud cover. Briefly, where low-altitude, low-latitude cloud cover diminishes, more short-wave radiation hits the Earth rather than being reflected harmlessly back to outer space. When it hits the Earth, it is displaced to the long wave and then heads back towards outer space. Therefore, the ERBE and CERES satellites, whose data is publicly available, will show simultaneous decreases in outgoing short-wave and increases in outgoing long-wave radiation if decreases in cloud cover are the cause, and vice versa for increases in cloud cover.
There are several good papers on this measured phenomenon. See e.g. Palle, E, Goode, P.RT., Montañes-Rodriguez, P., and Koonin, S.E., 2004, Changes in the Earth’s reflectance over the past two decades, Science 304, 1299-1301, doi:10.1126/science.1094070; or Pinker, R.T., Zhang, B., and Dutton, E.G., 2005, Do satellites detect trends in surface solar radiation?, Science 308, 850-854. It is also worth looking at the data from the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project, a “Mark-I-Eyeball” methodology which confirms the short-wave and long-wave measurements of the ERBE and CERES satellites.
My letter to Mr. Rudd also referred to measurements showing that outgoing radiation from the Earth’s surface increases as sea-surface temperatures increase, and does not diminish as all of the IPCC’s capable of being forced with changes in sea-surface temperatures predict. These measurements are reported and analyzed in Lindzen R.S., and Choi, Y.-S., 2009, On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data, Geophysical Research Letters. I do not have the page reference, because I have the preprint that the authors kindly sent to me.
Another reader asked whether my letter had been “peer-reviewed”. Yes, I asked an eminent Professor in Australia to read it for me before it was sent to the Prime Minister and to other party leaders. Any errors, however, are mine alone.
A reader asks whether my letter to Mr. Rudd is available as a .pdf file. I have sent the file to Anthony Watts, who, I am sure, will kindly make it available to anyone who would like to see it. Thank you all very much for your kind interest: and, as always, thanks to Anthony for having given the letter a wider audience.
[Update: a pdf of Lord Monckton’s letter is available here. ]
A reader asks whether my letter to Mr. Rudd is available as a .pdf file. I have sent the file to Anthony Watts, who, I am sure, will kindly make it available to anyone who would like to see it. Thank you all very much for your kind interest: and, as always, thanks to Anthony for having given the letter a wider audience.
And what about this gem of a letter to Miliband:
Rt Hon David Miliband MP
Secretary of State.
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA),
Nobel House
17 Smith Square
London
SW1P 3JR
16 July 2009
Dear Secretary of State,
My friend, who is in farming at the moment, recently received a cheque for £3,000 from the Rural Payments Agency for not rearing pigs. I would now like to join the “not rearing pigs” business.
In your opinion, what is the best kind of farm not to rear pigs on, and which is the best breed of pigs not to rear? I want to be sure I approach this endeavour in keeping with all government policies, as dictated by the EU under the Common Agricultural Policy.
I would prefer not to rear bacon pigs, but if this is not the type you want not rearing, I will just as gladly not rear porkers. Are there any advantages in not rearing rare breeds such as Saddlebacks or Gloucester Old Spots, or are there too many people already not rearing these?
As I see it, the hardest part of this programme will be keeping an accurate record of how many pigs I haven’t reared. Are there any Government or Local Authority courses on this?
My friend is very satisfied with this business. He has been rearing pigs for forty years or so, and the best he ever made on them was £1,422 in 1968. That is – until this year, when he received a cheque for not rearing any.
If I get £3,000 for not rearing 50 pigs, will I get £6,000 for not rearing 100? I plan to operate on a small scale at first, holding myself down to about 4,000 pigs not raised, which will mean about £240,000 for the first year. As I become more expert in not rearing pigs, I plan to be more ambitious, perhaps increasing to, say, 40,000 pigs not reared in my second year, for which I should expect about £2.4 million from your department. Incidentally, I wonder if I would be eligible to receive tradable carbon credits for all these pigs not producing harmful and polluting methane gases?
Another point: These pigs that I plan not to rear will not eat 2,000 tonnes of cereals. I understand that you also pay farmers for not growing crops. Will I qualify for payments for not growing cereals to not feed the pigs I don’t rear?
I am also considering the “not milking cows” business, so please send any information you have on that too. Please could you also include the current Defra advice on set aside fields? Can this be done on an e-commerce basis with virtual fields (of which I seem to have several thousand hectares)?
In view of the above you will realise that I will be totally unemployed, and will therefore qualify for unemployment benefits. I shall of course be voting for your party at the next general election.
Yours faithfully,
Nigel Johnson-Hill
“cohenite (17:00:27) :
Lord Monckton and Ian Plimer will be in Newcastle on 28/1/10, at the Town Hall at 12.30pm. I’m looking forward to it; and unlike Copenhagen I’ll make sure Lord Monckton isn’t attacked from behind.”
Forgive me, but I’m starting to appreciate the irritating American habit of writing “Paris, France”, etc. In the case of Newcastle, is that Newcastle, NSW or Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK? My first hope was the latter (in which case I’d go), but I’m beginning to think it must be in Oz. Pity. For those two I’d have gone.
(PS I think we can safely exclude the dozen or so Newcastles in the US, plus a few in Canada, Jamaica, etc. as well as several others in the UK.)
xyzlatin: “LAST year was Australia’s second warmest on record and closed out the warmest decade on file, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
The latest temperature data “is consistent with global warming”, the bureau states in its 2009 annual climate statement released on Tuesday.”
We have the same problem with the “scientists” at the Met Office, they seem to believe that sceptics don’t believe in global warming, and that by proving the world is getting warmer the case for the connection of CO2 is made. As I’ve said elsewhere. The world is warming, the CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing, but the assertion that CO2 caused the warming in the absence of a mathematical connection that can be observed isn’t science it’s soothsaying.
Monckton does have a distinctive old English style of speaking and writing. It is a harmless affectation taken by many people of education in the UK. Over the years I’ve had the privilege of working with many of these people and can say that none of them are have been anything but courteous and inclusive, these characteristics are part of the affectation, along with an ability to speak their mind without offence. Although I do wish he’d not use the words “liars” and “lies”.
Jimmy Haig – as a true scientist, I’m sure Monckton was and remains a sceptic. He may have changed his opinions, suspicions, etc, as he learned – that is what scientists are supposed to do – that is the point, to them, of science. That’s why they do a thing called research – not, as you seem to think, with the object of confirming their prejudices. Scientific theory isn’t like supporting a footy team – a lifelong commitment to be honoured regardless of the team’s fluctuating merits. Sadly, that’s the way the Hockey Team druids approached their work.
Try and understand that true scepticism is indispensible AT ALL TIMES to real scientists.
Hi,
Did you inadvertantly write “.2” rather than “.02” below.
.2 isn’t bad bang for relevant buck.
Another reader has asked why I have calculated the effect of implementing the Copenhagen Accord only as far as 2020. This is the time-horizon for the Accord. The effect of the Accord over ten years would be to forestall warming of just 0.2 C° (0.35 F°) forestalled even if everyone complies fully.
Vincent
I meant the start of the emissions trading process in 1997. That is why AGW has beeen so successful; in the face of falling temperatures. Richard Courtney’s report on Thatcher is literally fiction. I’m not saying he is wrong, but he invented it.
Monckton wrote “The Treaty of Copenhagen, like it or not, is communist” in an email to me. That is completely insane and allows the Guardian to very correctly call him a clown. His performance in Minnesota, playing up the the right wing Americans was pathetic.
Geoff Sherrington
I would reply, but your message was a content free insult.
The world will dismiss Monckton as a publicity seeking, right wing lunatic, because that is exactly what he is. He is a liability to any anti agw movement.
Look, it’s all very well to mock the mass media’s failings, but if you want to win this campaign, you need to win them over. Stop calling them names. Start writing letters to the editor that are well researched, aren’t tarnished by political agenda and don’t involve name-calling.
You, personally, might yearn for the Thatcher years, but let me assure you in the UK, those most sold on AGW do not share your affection. Talking her up will cost you politically whatever you believe. Just keep a lid on it.
We must take partisanship out of the equation, and win over the Left, not alienate them.
If you don’t understand this, you are demeaning the science in the name of petty politics. You are no better than the one-eyed likes of George Monbiot.
Don (02:04:49) ….this one is related to your post and is well worth a read.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1240082/It-gigantic-supercomputer-1-500-staff-170m-year-budget-So-does-Met-Office-wrong.html#comments
Well done, Lord Monckton.
Hope you gather even more support from around the world and eventually smash this scam completely.
yonason (22:25:45) :
would like to know if Lord Monkton has read the Gerlich & Tscheuschner paper,
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
and if so, what his assessment of it is.”
Reply: Thanks for the link to “Falsi cation Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics.” Taking into account the fudging that has been going on with the CRU/GISS/IPCC global temperature anomaly, if this paper is correct, then the current global cooling we observe could have started in the mid-70’s.
I too would be interested to see Lord Monckton’s views on this paper?
Eric Smith (14:06:30) :
Everything points to big oil.
Eric, if you have any insider connections to big oil, please list forthwith. I believe Lord M could use the cash to continue his altruistic endeavor. Enlighten the readers of this blog with some person or organization we can contact “en masse” ( a little pompous french) on behalf of the Viscount.
I can’t let the “pompous” dig go by without comment. On the contrary, Monckton is a gentleman the likes of whom we haven’t seen since Churchill. He is kinder and more civil than I could be under the circumstances.
I admire someone who goes where the truth leads. I wish more people had this much character.
@ur momisugly John Hooper
I understand your point and agree. I do think Lord M is a bit of a hero but I would like him to tone down the sneering and aggressive language (the Latin is a minor niggle). The trouble is that the public does tend to imbue members of the House of Lords with the label of pomposity and superiority, and Lord M’s house style tends to back up that assumption. Likewise Richard Dawkins might have made more converts to atheism if his book hadn’t been quite so bellicose.
The word “Sceptic” in this context has the connotation of right wing belligerence about it. What would help our cause as the rational, non-hysterical stickers-to-the-facts is a degree of sweet moderation (as Billy Bragg once put it) and cool rationality, not sniping emotional attacks referencing Komissars and Eurosceptical UKIP policies.
Then we can dissect away the political hyperbole and look at the facts.
If last year was the second warmest in Australia’s history, this means that there was a previously hotter year and thus the climate must be cooling.
What was wrong with LM’s letter and style?
I am a think colonial living in Zimbabwe and I understand him to have said, very convincingly, AGW is bollocks. Did I miss something?
Sorry that should have been “thick” colonial. Which I suppose I just confirmed. LOL
Vincent (02:03:06) :
Eric Smith,
“It is clear the oil companies have been behind this from the start, and Monckton, Alex Jones or anyone else claiming a global socialist takeover will be seen as crazy extremists.”
Clear how? I am prepared to believe the oil companies have jumped on board as rent seekers, but show me some evidence they were behind it from the start. Richard Courtney had, 30 years ago, produced a report which described the mechanisms that would lead to the dominance of AGW. History has shown that to be correct, although as we know, correlation does not equal causation…”
Do not make the mistake of thinking bankers and Corporate Execs are Capitalists. Many are not. Both Maurice Strong and David Rockefeller (both active in environmentalism and AGW) are “Socialists” as well as big oil honchos.
This is the form of “socialism” I am talking about.
“What unites the many different forms of Socialism.. is the conception that socialism (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) must be handed down to the grateful masses in one form or another, by a ruling elite which is not subject to their control…” http://search.marxists.org/archive/draper/1966/twosouls/0-2souls.htm
Or as David Rockefeller put it , “We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. . . . It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.”
As Lord Monckton states it is not a conspiracy theory. Here it is in black and white:
“…characterizing my family and me as “internationalists” and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.” – Pg. 405 of David Rockefeller’s Autobiography, 2002
David Rockefeller speaking at the UN Business Council in Sept 17 1994
“This present window of opportunity, during which a truly peaceful and interdependent world order might be built, will not be open for too long – We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order. “
The 1972 UN Earth Summit, headed by Maurice Strong, was the start of organizing and hijacking the environmental movement as well as AGW. Strong, a big shot in Canadian oil, was Vice President of the World Wildlife Fund, member of the Club of Rome, Trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation, Senior Advisor to the World Bank and the UN, and above all, he served on the UN Commission on Global Governance. David Rockefeller’s Chase bank was training ground for three World Bank President’s and Rockefeller hosts a luncheon for the World Bank Hotshots yearly at his Westchester NY home.
The whole Rockefeller/Strong/Saudi/Khashoggi/CIA/Bush/oil/banking interconnections are worth looking at considering the 1973 Oil Crisis bankrupted third World Countries so they had to get World bank/IMF loans with SAPs strings controlling their governments.
Strong’s early work with YMCA international “…may have been the genesis of Strong’s realization that NGOs (non-government organizations) provide an excellent way to use NGOs to couple the money from philanthropists and business with the objectives of government.” http://sovereignty.net/p/sd/strong.html
“Very few of even the larger international NGOs are operationally democratic, in the sense that members elect officers or direct policy on particular issues,” notes Peter Spiro. “Arguably it is more often money than membership that determines influence, and money more often represents the support of centralized elites, such as major foundations, than of the grass roots.” The CGG has benefited substantially from the largesse of the MacArthur, Carnegie, and Ford Foundations…” http://www.afn.org/~govern/strong.html
And of course the UN is also key in directing the international NGO’s Like Greenpeace and WWF. http://www.un.org/esa/coordination/ngo/
The more you dig the more it become apparent AGW and Environmentalism did not thrive by pure happenstance. “..The greens have the high ground in most of their fights” making them ideal for pushing through legislation that some how always gets twisted to the advantage of the big international corporations and central bankers because they pack the bureaucracies with their puppets.
The Bilderberg Group is an unofficial, annual, invitation-only conference of around 130 guests, most of whom are persons of great influence in the fields of politics, business, banking, and media. The group has met annually at hotels or resorts throughout the world since 1954. They claim their meetings are entirely innocent however I have a problem believing they have met for over 50 years for teacakes and bridge especially with the very tight security enforced at the meetings.
The Skeptical community is fortunate to have Lord Monckton as a champion.
When I first heard him speak (on U Tube) I was absolutely entranced – razor-sharp wit, scientific knowledge, charm and panache all in one elegant package. As a Kiwi with very working class origins, I lose patience with those who would limit us all to the lowest common denominator in communication. To those who find the Latin tags irritating or uninteligable, buy a dictionary of Latin quotations and do some reading – you will enrich your life!
John Hooper (12:15:05) :
“…sloppy fact checking.”
“…who’s already tarnished by his Thatcher connection.”
If you had bothered to check your facts you will find out that:
So Hooper, in your eyes has the Hadley Centre been tarnished by the Thatcher connection? Had you checked your facts you would know how pro-warming the Hadley Centre is.
Never quote Wiki on contentious climate issues.
History of the Global Warming Scare
Ed Darrell:
What is your source for malaria deaths?
I have a good friend who served for many years in the military as an entomologist. He has assured me in no uncertain terms that the use of DDT as a topical treatment on the walls of dwellings has a profound effect on the survival of the mosquito which spreads malaria.
It is the topical use of DDT, especially on walls and ceilings of bedrooms, which could have prevented 40,000,000 malaria deaths. But such use has been banned. Such topical use does not effect birds. Such topical use does not effect humans. But the scare tactics of Rachel Carson and the Kennedy family certainly did more harm than good.
It is, regrettably, true that widespread open air spraying of DDT is not effective. But the universal ban on any use of DDT in any way whatever has been counter-productive.
Meanwhile–can we get away from logarithms for a while? All of the climate information I have ever seen is periodic, not logarithmic. One of my favorite exercises is fitting a sine curve to annual temperature variations. The Sun’s behavior is certainly periodic, on several different scales. The variations in the orbit of our Earth are periodic, again with multiple periods. And the global history if alternating ice ages and tropical periods is periodic.
As for Lord Monckton: those of us across the pond are fortunate indeed that an alert, articulate, and informed man has taken it upon himself to cleave to the heart of the issue. The game of a worldwide carbon licensing bureaucracy is not worth the candle of any supposed diminution of man-made global warming. That he should use the results of the IPCC to hoist them on their own petard [a little Latin lingo, there] is truly delicious.
And the stunning list of the Australian freeloaders who got a two-week paid vacation in Copenhagen was just whipped cream on top!
It is a pity that sceptics vs believers has become a left/right political argument. There are many sceptics who don’t fit that paradigm and indeed it is utterly counter-productive to identify any view on climate change as being an indicator of polarised political positions. I tend to left of centre and merely seek the truth. Lord Monckton’s well known right wing views on many issues are not to my taste and I find many of his social views somewhat odious. However his knowledge and presentation of the facts on climate are extremely compelling and stated with the kind of clarity entirely lacking elsewhere. It is the facts that I am interested in, and for that reason I am grateful for his contribution, but that doesn’t imply any agreement with his political views on other matters.
Andrew30 (15:37:53) :
I’ve been a sceptic since 1988 (Thatcher’s time) when a fellow student told me about Hansen. We were having a few beers at the time. My response was the same then then – as it is now – AGW it total crap.
Don’t get me wrong – His Lordship would open the batting in my team any day, He’d probably get the new ball too.
I just wish that AGW had been nipped in the bud way back then.
I have another theory. The University I was at used to get a lot of funding from the oil industry. In 1985 the oil price crashed and that was the end of oil industry funding. I remember saying that I’d probably go into show business as there was no chance of getting an oil industry job at the time. AGW came along just at the right time for the Universities…
Gail Combes,
Your position is broadly in agreement with my own. I agree totally that individuals like Rockefeller and Strong have been behind AGW from the beginning, as a means of gaining power. However, because two magnates/powerbrokers happen to be in the oil industry, it is not the same as saying that the oil industry has been behind AGW. The oil industry comprises hundreds of companies with thousands of board members who quietly go about their business of making a profit. Rockefeller and Strong are members of a cabal coincidentally touching oil but also including the likes of Rothschilds (finance) as well as many others (Gore, Branson, Pachauri etc). In fact, you mentioned several in your own post. As someone once complained to me in the eighties, the world is controlled by the billionaires.
“Do not make the mistake of thinking bankers and Corporate Execs are Capitalists. Many are not. Both Maurice Strong and David Rockefeller (both active in environmentalism and AGW) are “Socialists” as well as big oil honchos.”
Yes and no. They are certainly not capitalists in the accepted sense, yet I have a problem with the term “socialist”. Socialism implies state ownership of the means of production and distribution of the proceeds of industry to the working classes. Yet, it is clear that the proposed cap & trade bills in their various forms will have the reverse effect by removing wealth from the very classes that socialism purports to distribute it to. A better term would be “plutocracy” – rule of the masses by the rich, or even “kleptocracy.”
Whatever we decide to call it, one thing it will never be is a “democracy.”
Mathman (06:58:52) :
“Meanwhile–can we get away from logarithms for a while? All of the climate information I have ever seen is periodic, not logarithmic.|
I’m with you Mathman. The Earth goes round the Sun goes round the Galaxy goes round the Universe. It’s all cyclical.
John Hooper (04:44:13) :
Look, it’s all very well to mock the mass media’s failings, but if you want to win this campaign, you need to win them over. Stop calling them names. Start writing letters to the editor that are well researched, aren’t tarnished by political agenda and don’t involve name-calling.
Mass media’s ‘failings’? I can think of a number of terms to use here but trivializing most of the media’s past responses and calling them ‘failings’ wouldn’t be one. And you think that the media needs to be ‘won over’? Why make the effort? And on what grounds do you think that they can be trusted to present a fair perspective? Your approach reminds me of the story of when the snake wanted to be carried across the river. The skeptical potential carrier said “But you will bite and poison me if I let you near me” to which the snake offered “I promise I won’t this time…please, just this one time”. Halfway across the river, the snake bit and poisoned the volunteer carrier who screamed “Why did you do that? You promised you wouldn’t!” The snake said “yes…. but I’m a snake and I couldn’t help it!” Such is the distrust that should be the norm when the history of most of the media on this issue is so consistently biased and obviously agenda driven… and none of it with a view to presenting a fair perspective on those who don’t believe in AGW.
Mr. Hooper…. Here’s a challenge for you. Earlier on this posting I outlined my experience when I wrote a ‘well researched, untarnished-by-political-agenda and with no name-calling’ letter to the editor of a major newspaper in the area I live. As a matter of fact, I have submitted several letters…. none have been printed and none have had their receipt even acknowledged. Now before you jump on this experience as being something that happened because ‘my letters probably weren’t worthy of acceptance, they were inflammatory, they were too vicious’ … or some other description like this, you need to understand that I’ve encouraged a number of other ‘smart people’ to write as well and they can report a virtually identical experience to mine. Here’s the challenge for you – why don’t you write a serious letter to the newspaper of your choice which in the past has taken a pro-AGW view and for which the only stipulation is that your letter present a reasonably firm perspective that anyone would say adequately counters the typical pro-AGW position that has been demonstrated as being taken by that newspaper in the past? Then report back here as to whether they actually printed it. (In this context, I’m referring to an actual ‘letter to the editor’ as opposed to simply supplying a comment to an op-ed piece written by somebody else.) My experience tells me that it is easily predictable as to how this will turn out…..
The events following the CRU email release of Nov 19th clearly indicate that it should have been called ‘climediagate’, not climategate. I think if you follow through with the challenge outlined above, you will begin to understand why.