Guest post by Thomas Fuller
Like a supervillain from Marvel Comics, a new threat to civilization has emerged. It is Climate Disruption, the result of a rebranding exercise announced by U.S. Science Czar John Holdren.
George Orwell understood the importance of controlling the terms of political debate, and predicted this level of Newspeak long before John Holdren joined with Paul Ehrlich to demand the U.S. ‘de-develop,’ a Newspeak way of calling for a return to medieval life.
But this one is a real beaut. Climate change, which morphed into ‘global warming’ for political reasons and later re-emerged after the globe stubbornly refused to warm fast enough, is now climate disruption.
What this means is that any unusual event–or even usual events, like walruses showing up on Alaskan beaches, which they do every year–can be called climate disruption in action, and blamed on human activity.
We are fulfilling Orwellian requirements in other respects as well: Cameras everywhere, recording everything (including dust devils that can inflate tornado statistics)? Check. Intrusive software following us around? Check. A devaluing of the English language to suit political objectives? Double check.
Take the term ‘denier.’ Please. It is hate speech, pure and simple. It was dragged into the climate debate specifically to compare skeptics with skinhead thugs who denied the Holocaust occurred. It has persisted despite it being pointed out as hate speech because those who use it are thugs themselves, needing to devalue any contribution from their enemies and because it gives them an almost sexual sadistic thrill.
But ‘climate disruption’ is more dangerous–it is a potent political weapon. There are no terms of reference, there is a certainty that it will be misused and it will cheapen any attempt to objectively observe our climate and to accurately describe what is happening to it.
Where’s the Silver Surfer when you really need him?
Someone who has been studying the issues if sustainability for nearly 50 years certainly has more expertise on the subject than people who deny that humans are part of the global ecosystem of the planet
All these name changes (Global Warming > Climate Change > Climate Disruption) are worrisome, but they also provide an opportunity: they allow us to see which members of the Mainstream Media are more or less subservient to the current White House.
GM says:
September 19, 2010 at 3:01 am
Doesn’t make him right, though. Until Newton and Hooke and all their counterparts and adversaries came along the consensus on mathematics was that, to take one example, a 100 pound ball would fall 100 times faster than a 1 pound ball. This had been studied for decades by many people, those people being experts in their field and standing on the belief that because they had studied for so long they had more expertise to proclaim that it was so than people who said they were talking out of their unobservant arses. They were still wrong as can be, despite that expertise.
Studying something for decades might make you an expert, but that doesn’t mean you’re remotely correct. Holdren is simply wrong. and has been proven wrong repeatedly by events. Claiming he’s right because he’s spent so long studying the wrong things smacks of some sort of, well… denial.
jmrSudbury says:
September 19, 2010 at 2:52 am
“Climate change, which morphed into ‘global warming’ for political reasons…”
That is backwards. It was global warming first.
John M Reynolds
That is my understanding as well. Some supporting links.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2003/mar/04/usnews.climatechange
http://www.ewg.org/node/8684
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz
“Although Luntz later tried to distance himself from the Bush administration policy, it was his idea that administration communications reframe “global warming” as “climate change” since “climate change” was thought to sound less severe.”
Gordon Gekko would understand the why of this re-branding. Greed is not always about money. It’s also about ego and political power.
GM 2:27 am: “…..if it [c word] was correct, we would have rationed fossil fuels, instituted a nearly complete moratorium on births for a few decades….”
Who’s we?
GM,
You left out a couple of details in your attempt to blame skeptics for what AGW promoters are doing:
1) it is the AGW promoters who are rebranding the issue, not skeptics.
2) Holdren has, as you said, been studying what you euphemistically call sustainability.
-you forgot to mention that Holdren has been wrong in the conclusions he has made regarding ‘sustainability’. Holdren has aligned himself with the likes of Paul Ehrlich, the infamous false profit of doom. Holdren’s own words over a lifetime show him to be a nutcase. That is the issue, not the skeptics pointing this out.
It seems to be a very predictable habit of AGW true believers like yourself to make omissions, attempt to deceptively reframe an issue and then to accuse the people pointing out the problems in what you support of being conspiratorial paranoids.
By the way, I think the rebranding efforts of the AGW marketers has gone something like this:
climate change > global warming > climate change > climate disruption.
The existing confluence of individual aims and incentives sufficiently explain those solo and corporate activities, and the copying of tactics and vocabulary, of green alarmists to educate the people – at the point of a fine or prison sentance – into the paths of virtue and voluntary servitude. A worldwide conspiricy could do no better.
Not with 100% certainty. But the odds of the experts being right vs the laymen being right are always greatly skewed towards the experts. A point that those who reject expertise on the basis of certain primal anti-intellectual “who are you to tell me” instincts rarely appreciate (or prefer to omit when they do understand it)
Humanity as a whole
I actually think they’re shooting themselves in the foot with this one: “Disruption”, to me, implies a drastic event. Using it as a catch-all to cover all events which were previosly attributed to “climate change” will reduce their credibility even more.
Giant tidal waves inundating cities: Disruption.
Slightly warmer summer evenings: Disruption? Really?
Complete melt of all arctic ice: Disruption!
Slow, steady recovery of ice extent, with the occasional step backward: Disruption as well?
It casts too broad a net to include things that aren’t disruptive at all, and can easily weaken the case for action. “Climate change” as a term is so bland and inclusive that every minor event could be claimed to be related. But if you’re calling it disruption, then it damn well better be disruptive: I want my state-wide firestorms as proof!
Except, as I pointed out and you apparently ignored, Holdren has been proven wrong many times. Expertise counts for very little when it’s demonstrated to be incorrect.
To the extent that actual predictions (as opposed to scenarios) have been stated, Ehrlich and Hodlren were wrong in the same way that physicists are wrong when they make the prediction that a blind person jumping from the roof of Empire State Building will splatter himself on the ground and die with close to 100% probability and while that person is somewhere between the 30th and 40th floor on his way down – he’s doing perfectly fine at that time but he doesn’t see how close and fast approaching the ground is. Which doesn’t make the predictions any less accurate.
That’s assuming he doesn’t take the lift down. Holdren’s predictions, and those of his forebears, are based on categorical errors of that sort: they see a blind man on the observation deck of the empire state building and assume that obviously he’s going to jump off, when in actual fact he’s going to take the lift.
GM says:
September 19, 2010 at 2:27 am
“[…]But we aren’t doing anything remotely approaching that kind of seriousness towards the problem, in fact we are doing absolutely nothing as the world is pretty much on BAU path.”
GM, i live in Germany. It’s Malthusian hell. You’d really like it.
No doubt volcanoes and Earth quakes will now be miss-classed into climatic events.
And make science more stupid than it already is.
GM
“physicists are wrong when they make the prediction that a blind person jumping from the roof of Empire State Building will splatter himself on the ground and die with close to 100% probability”
Citation please. Which physicists predicted this? Or did you just make up a strawman?
“Humanity as a whole”
Citation please. When was the last time “Humanity as a whole” rationed anything or “instituted a near complete moratorium” on anything? Or did you just make this up?
” those who reject expertise”
Citation please. Who rejects expertise? Name one? And if you are referring to Climatologists, what “expertise”? Which “climate scientist” has made any prediction that hasn’t been demonstrably wrong, unskilful, was not based on cherrypicked and “homogenised” data and periods, incompetent or agenda driven algorithms? Which shroud waving prognoses have been demonstrated to be based on firm measured and replicable evidence and are not controversial?
I could carry on working through your lame troll comments but even you should get the idea. Come up with some real facts or buzz off and comment elsewhere.
Just attach the phrase “Climate Disruption” to “Made in [snip]” every time you use it.
[I know what you are refering to, but do not make one country accountable for the opinions and actions of one person. Your comment might be viewed as some by racism ~jove, Mod]
William Briggs has a fun blog post on the subject:
“Climate Calamity” Rejected In Favor Of “Climate Disruption”
“President Obama’s White House has been hard at work trying to discover another term for global warming. The old phrase was deemed staid and passé, so much so that its repetition was judged unlikely to motivate political forces any more than it already has.”
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=2902
Has the hockey stick been traded for a (more palatable) bowl of spaghetti?
The message seems to be:
“Citizens, You are the cause of deviations from average.”
Perhaps seemingly clever [upon first glance], since most people expect weather to be normal (and are endlessly amazed when it isn’t).
A 2nd look:
It will be interesting to see the graphs…
–
Dear Minister of Truth,
In an effort to form a well-based opinion, I write with the following request:
I want to see “climate disruption” defined graphically. (A picture is worth 1000 words.)
Please do not delay as my deadline for forming an opinion is Friday.
Thank you sincerely.
–
Up next:
Lazy reliance on “chaos theory” to explain the bowl of spaghetti [and its forecasting failures]. (i.e. prepare for more good laughs)
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John Marshall says:
September 19, 2010 at 2:57 am
And when that does not happen what will he call it? Holdren is certifiable and certainly is operating beyond his level of expertise.
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GM says:
September 19, 2010 at 3:01 am
John Marshall says:
September 19, 2010 at 2:57 am
And when that does not happen what will he call it? Holdren is certifiable and certainly is operating beyond his level of expertise.
Someone who has been studying the issues if sustainability for nearly 50 years certainly has more expertise on the subject than people who deny that humans are part of the global ecosystem of the planet
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Congrats, GM. You responded to John Marshall within 4 minutes. Dunno if it’s a new record here. But glad to see you’re all wired up and ready to go!
Climatic boundaries are the big ones, like drops of 2 to 5 degrees Celsius in 2 to 5 years, during the Older and Younger Dryas.
GM, We are not talking about predictions that have not come true yet, we are talking about predictions that have already been measured and tested and proven false.
For example, the esteemed Dr Hansen’s prediction that global warming (as it was called at the time) would cause the Hudson River to flood Manhattan to the extent that even the ground floor of his current New York office would already be underwater within 20 years.
He made this prediction over 20 years ago and the Hudson has only risen one inch in that time, not the 20 feet he was predicting.
To use your scenario, it would have meant the blind man jumped off the roof, and landed 3 feet lower on a window cleaner’s hoist and then was lowered safely to street level where he walked away unharmed!
People do not disbelieve the climate alarmists because they are stupid, or ignorant, but because they take great exception to being lied to by “experts” who abandon the scientific principles to selectively cherry-pick data, misrepresent or hide inconvenient data and then use PR, Spin and name calling to try to get people to believe them.
The truth always comes out in the end and needs NO PR to support it.
What I have discovered within my engineering peers, is that when intelligent, doctorate level people look at the totality of the evidence, people who are expert in their own fields, people who have not yet abandoned the scientific method, they become more sceptical of the alarmist’s claims, not less.
I’m with you, Tom. The change of terms is about climate as a tool for political control and thus not really about actual climate.
I have a niggling feeling that this may backfire. The serfs might start calling “climate disruption” and demanding action when the elites don’t want to act.