Some weeks we are given gifts from on high. This week was one of them.
Give thanks to George Monbiot for this gem, from his essay:
Climate change enlightenment was fun while it lasted. But now it’s dead
The best outcome anyone now expects from December’s climate summit in Mexico is that some delegates might stay awake during the meetings.
…
But nobody cares enough to make a fight of it. The disagreements are simultaneously entrenched and muted. The doctor’s certificate has not been issued; perhaps, to save face, it never will be. But the harsh reality we have to grasp is that the process is dead.
George still doesn’t get this bit though:
Greens are a puny force by comparison to industrial lobby groups, the cowardice of governments and the natural human tendency to deny what we don’t want to see.
It was regular citizens, blogs, and somebody who had the courage to bring CRU’s emails to sunlight to show the world what they were really dealing with. There wasn’t any “industrial lobby”, just a bunch of regular folks who were fed up with being fed mushroom food. Once it was out in the open, exposed by this rag tag bunch of citizens and bloggers, the greens pretty much did the rest themselves by their pathetic public relations on the situation.
And soon, they’ll be on to the next big scare.
Read the whole article here
“It was regular citizens, blogs, and somebody who had the courage to bring CRU’s emails to sunlight to show the world what they were really dealing with. There wasn’t any “industrial lobby”, just a bunch of regular folks who were fed up with being fed mushroom food. ”
Absolutely right. Well stated, Anthony.
THAT is the message that I would like to see put out there. These guys are now trying to play the victim card while they have been the dishonest manipulators all along.
“Missing from the proposed cuts are the net greenhouse gas emissions we have outsourced to other countries and now import in the form of manufactured goods. Were these included in the UK’s accounts, alongside the aviation, shipping and tourism gases excluded from official figures, Britain’s emissions would rise by 48%.”
So even Moonbiot admits that the primary effect of artificially increasing the cost of industrial production in the UK has been to increase CO2 emissions by pushing the jobs out to countries which aren’t committing economic suicide, where production is far less energy-efficient and the products have to be shipped thousands of miles.
Good one, Greenies!
Meeting in Cancun, partying, eating a lot of Mexican food, drinking a lot of Mexican beer, all those drinks using that local Mexican water…
Hope they bought enough equivalent carbon offsets for all those methane releases.
Offsets for the lost carbon sequestration due to consumption of processed coca plant derivatives are optional….
LOL his last try to get attention for the sinking ship of CAGW.
And in the comments at the original article, Moonbat reacts to someone, saying:
“In the meantime, if you want an intelligent debate, please drop stupid terms like ecofascism. Read a little history and find out what fascism looked like.”
In his article he does use ‘denier’ by himself. What a hypocrite this man is.
How low can one go? He did hit rock bottom here imho. In content and in language.
It may help George M if he were to stop worrying about the Politics of Climate. At least for just long enough that he can have an honest look at why so many climate realists link that the Alarmism he has personally helped to Foster is somewhat overblown.
Thanks for all you have done, Anthony. The fantasy that big industry is funding some anti-Climate Change movement is amazing.
Next big scare … hmmmm … walruses … no, that’s so last year.
I know! Let’s shovel a whole lotta fertilizer on genetically enhanced foods, aka Frankenfoods (love that scary handle). Just have a bunch of crazed out wackos run around with pretty signs for the cameras.
Some big industrial lobby group … bloggers.
The reality is that Sally House-coat and Johnny Lunchbucket woke up and realized that they were being sold a bill of goods by the “fear-brigade”. The pathologically afraid and all those trying to cash in on it … including the fund seeking universities, the politicians and the MSM. The alarmists huffed, and they puffed, but they couldn’t blow the house down. Nice try, Al. Back to the drawing board, hey? Maybe you can dream up a new fear next year.
Chalk one up for the little guy!
Arrogance and self-interest takes it on the chin.
Anthony, thank you very much for the article but I think we are creating the false impression here that the MSM climate change scare has been overcome.
This is IMO absolutely not the case.
The government of my former country for example is still in the process of building a 100 billion Euro water defense because the politicians believe there will be a drastic rise of ocean levels by 2050 and in the USA governmental budgets for climate spending are beyond belief.
World wide the quest for cap & trade is still underway and even in the USA the subject still slumbers on many agenda’s.
The overall economic and social consequences at this moment in time are mind boggling and the consequences for millions of people are devastating.
Thousands of pensioners in the UK can no longer pay their energy bills, many people in development countries can no longer afford the minimum amount of food necessary to survive and the flood of climate change propaganda still has not ceased.
In China an entire region has been banned from the use of coal without sufficient alternative energy sources available to make it through the next (cold)winter and in Sudan people are beaten up and punished for using camel dung for cooking with no other fuel at their disposal.
The Thompson family in Australia risking to lose their land is only the tip of of a giant iceberg from what’s really going on right now.
Politicians and policy makers have gone “underground” in regard to the decision making process of budgets and regulation to fight Climate Change and serious efforts are undertaken to bypass the public. Any opposition, no matter how polite, is demonized and often punished by blocking careers, budgets and people, including scientists, journalists and meteorologists are even losing their jobs.
I am convinced that we are just at the beginning of a long and hard battle that will bring us far beyond the scientific aspects of climate science.
At this moment in time we might have won the climate change battle by arguments, but we still haven’t won the war ergo we are not even engaged in the fighting.
Please don’t regard my comments in any way as criticism because I think you and the entire WUWT community are doing a terrific job with effects far beyond my expectations with an ever growing global public.
I am just trying to make the point that this is just the beginning of a huge battle with an highly uncertain outcome.
Lord Monckton has taken the fight on a political level when he joined a political party in the UK.
I think his initiative is a strong hint where the next battle will take place.
I think it will be very difficult to avoid any political engagement.
I don’t know how or in what form so I am left with a qyestion.
Watts Next?
Because, of course, the “regular citizens” and bloggers, are more competent climatologists than the people who have spent their entire lives studying the subject. Because science is decided by popular vote and expertise matters nothing. Because those “regular citizens” have not at all been influenced by organized campaigns to discredit climate science – they came to the conclusion that it was false entirely on their own, completely independently. Because those “regular citizens” put science first and ideology second – because there is absolutely no correlation between political and religious convictions and acceptance of AGW and because those convictions were arrived at after their mind was made up on AGW, not long before that. Because Monbiot would absolutely write such a desperate piece if he was an agent of a vast conspiracy to tax the common folk over some non-issues….
I definitely see the logic…
REPLY: What’s really interesting is that “regular citizens” like myself, have the integrity to put their name to their words, even if unpopular, while academics like yourself take no- risk pot-shots from the comfort of anonymity. Class act there perfesser. You and Eli Rabbet should compare notes. – Anthony
Monbiot says: “I don’t know. These failures have exposed not only familiar political problems, but deep-rooted human weakness. All I know is that we must stop dreaming about an institutional response that will never materialise and start facing a political reality we’ve sought to avoid. The conversation starts here.”
==========================
Hmmm. The institution is in your camp, bud, not ours.
If they are not your friend….then, the “Institution”…wow… they DEFINITELY are not our friend.
Ask your friends Lisa Jackson, Al Gore, or John Holdren.
Or to take a step further past the Political Establishment and into the “Scientific” Establishment, ask Michael Mann, James Hansen, or Ben Santer, for that matter.
I am sure they and Gavin Schmidt and others would snuggle up to you discussing issues at a coffee shop, before they would even begin to give us the time of day.
Your whining, George, is pitiful.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Greens are a puny force? Perhaps Monbiot is just being prescient.
I suspect, though, that Joanne Nova surprised herself when she tapped the power behind “just a bunch of regular folks who were fed up with being fed mushroom food.”
I predict it will be a cold autumn and winter for the more rabid of the greens. What next? Demonstrations to defer closing power plants?
Read the whole article and all the comments. George hasn’t lost a scintilla of his faith in CAGW. Poor George! Poor, poor George!! Oh the humanity!!! ROTFLMAO!!!!
It may not be the next big scare, but California is moving down the road to being even more hopelessly un-competitive in the world market. This is the greens’ requirement known as the Green Chemistry Initiative. This will be a complete disaster, causing jobs losses, business departures, and, as stated above, increased pollution via manufacturing in far away places then transporting products long distances.
see http://www.dtsc.ca.gov/pollutionprevention/greenchemistryinitiative/index.cfm
[snip – off topic, wrong thread, feel free to repost on sea ice news]
Before there was a climate hoax owned by morons, One of the first Christian Crusades was that of The Children Crusade.
After roaming Europe for a while, off to Italy they went. Upon entering Italy, the Italians took over the crusade and obliged the children into slavery or a life as whores. .
As for this end of the world climate disruption hoax, History symbolically repeats itself again.
“And soon, they’ll be on to the next big scare.”
… solar magnetism under threat?
or… carbon radioactivity alarms politicians?
R. de Haan says: (September 20, 2010 at 8:51 pm) I am convinced that we are just at the beginning of a long and hard battle that will bring us far beyond the scientific aspects of climate science.
I fully endorse the general tenor of your comment, R. de Haan.
There is more confirmation daily that this never was about “climate change” or science (although many of both good and ill will even now believe it was and is), but was, and again is, about power; about money; about control — and perhaps even bitterness (the loser’s revenge?).
The major difficulty I see in defeating this whole juggernaut is the convincing of good people in positions of power that… that they’ve been had (to use shorthand).
These people of goodwill have to be firstly shown they have been misled; then shown they have the support of the people in standing up for truth ─ because that is not always easy for politician or scientist or policymaker.
Most of them need to know they will not have to defend the bridge on their own ─ although there will always be the good and the brave who will step forward as individuals and make a stand (we should not forget them).
“Because science is decided by popular vote and expertise matters nothing.”
I believe you’ll find that it’s the alarmists who have been claiming that science is decided by ‘consensus’ rather than by facts.
And the problem Moonbiot has is that the supposed ‘facts’ collapse the moment that anyone with half an ounce of scientific training looks at them. My tutors at Oxford would have laughed me out of the room if I’d presented them with what passes for science in the ‘global anthropogenic climate disruption’ scam these days.
I smiled at one of the comments (from saigonio):
“Well done, George — you are one of the first of the Warmies to make it to Stage 4 of the grieving process for a lost love.
The Five Stages Of Grief are:
1. Denial and Isolation.
2. Anger.
3. Bargaining.
4. Depression.
5. Acceptance.”
I think there may be something to this. The unspoken truth may be that sometimes, people feel embarrassed and just want to crawl in a hole where past indiscretions can be suppressed, and notoriety outlived. Fat chance of that, mind.
They still can’t come right out and say they’re wrong. They take home their ball and won’t come out to play, and it’s all the fault of those pigheaded folk who wouldn’t let them be the team captain; one day, they’ll be sorry…
But nobody cares enough to make a fight of it.
Actually George, the people you say don’t want to fight are in reality, seeing ‘global warming’ isn’t real. They likely don’t want to waste the life fighting an imaginary problem. They have a real life of their own to take care of.
Also, George, I still remember your rudeness, really, it was viciousness, to Ian Plimer. You rabid actions did more harm to your fight than good. Your character in dealing with your opponent revealed something about global warming that makes people smell a rat.
…it’s always fun to laugh out loud at the Moonbat
(“Even so, none of them are real. Missing from the proposed cuts are the net greenhouse gas emissions we have outsourced to other countries and now import in the form of manufactured goods. Were these included in the UK’s accounts, alongside the aviation, shipping and tourism gases excluded from official figures, Britain’s emissions would rise by 48%.”)
…Tourism gases?? I’ll hold the wisecracks!
However, folks, I know this crowd very well, having worked in the environmental consulting business for over 25 years, much of it dealing with alternative energy and methane mitigation. Don’t consider the fight over yet, there is far too much power, money and influence at stake.
USEPA will make their move shortly, now that cap and trade legislation is dead. Watch for it. My clients are quietly preparing for the eventuality of carbon regulation. EPA has all the authority they need, backed up by the US Supreme Court.
It was regular citizens, blogs, and somebody who had the courage to bring CRU’s emails to sunlight to show the world what they were really dealing with.
It was also a select few. Such as Anthony. (Et al., but I don’t want to list some and leave others out.)
What an honor to be a part of it!
George M. wrote: “The enlightenment? Fun while it lasted.” It may have been fun for some, ignorant pendants perhaps, but enlightening, I question that? This whole AWG foolishness has been and is anything but. He did get his punctuation correct, I do give credit for that. Probably some underpaid copy editor in reality.
It greatly pleases me to see George M weeping, whining and complaining.
“It was regular citizens, blogs, and somebody who had the courage to bring CRU’s emails to sunlight to show the world what they were really dealing with. There wasn’t any “industrial lobby”, just a bunch of regular folks who were fed up with being fed mushroom food. ”
Meanwhile, the mainstream media stood by and did…nothing.
Because, of course, the “regular citizens” and bloggers, are more competent climatologists than the people who have spent their entire lives studying the subject.
Um, yes.
Surprisingly more so.
Because science is decided by popular vote and expertise matters nothing. Because those “regular citizens” have not at all been influenced by organized campaigns to discredit climate science – they came to the conclusion that it was false entirely on their own, completely independently.
Oh! The irony! It burns!
Because those “regular citizens” put science first and ideology second – because there is absolutely no correlation between political and religious convictions and acceptance of AGW and because those convictions were arrived at after their mind was made up on AGW, not long before that.
Well, I’m, a non-believer, myself, but to be on the safe side, I’ll predict an average increase in lightning strikes in your general vicinity.
Judging from the last 120 years of 4 climate panics, the Big Chill Out will eventually put many of the activists on the Next Ice Age scare. The timing of the ship jumping will depend entirely on how hard & fast the icing-down of the climate manifests itself.
I agree with many people that climate change alarmism is a kind of modern, secular religion for many of its ordinary followers but I have long suspected that those at the top end of the AGW hierarchy think of it as a ‘brand’.
Indeed it was during the pathetic UK summer of 1996 that I first noticed how global warming stories always/only appeared in the media during (rare) spells of warm or sunny weather…rather like the local radio commercials for sunscreen, ice-cream and holiday attractions that only get scheduled when the temperature goes above an agreed setpoint.
It was clear to me then, that there was a coherent marketing/pr strategy at work and given the frisson of millenial panic in the air at the time, I was not surprised that within a few years ‘media saturation’ had been achieved.
However even the most popular and successful ‘campaigns’ have a definite life cycle. And we know how hard the creative teams work to ‘re-invent or re-invigorate’ the brand. (Note I haven’t even mentioned the quality of the actual ‘product’ yet.)
For the next five years the ‘creatives’ worked hard at their brief and as it turned out luck was on their side. There were indeed a series of unusually mild winters and to cap it all a perfect English summer in 2003.
Once upon a time the pale population of that country would have celebrated such a scorcher by roasting themselves pink and drinking copious amounts of beer but with all the media singing from the same hymn-sheet, this beautiful summer weather was repackaged and sold as a early symptom imminent planetary doom. The AGW brand reigned supreme and vast numbers of decent people were genuinely frightened that environmental Apocalypse was just round the corner.
Of course the following year, the predicted Sahara like conditions failed to materialize and as I recall it was grey, damp, chilly and in every way ‘normal’ British Summer. In retrospect we can identify that summer as the peak of the carefully engineered hysteria. Without Al Gore and his dodgy graphs and charts the whole idea would have been forgotten shortly thereafter. Undoubtedly ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ reached a vast audience and did give the brand a new lease of life but the product was the same.
In the ad business there’s an old adage…’you can’t polish a turd’ and Gore’s effort to gloss the AGW brand with ‘science’ rang as hollow as those ads where models in white coats, and glasses carrying clipboards tell us about creams scientifically proven to hide signs of aging.
One of the problems faced by the team at AGW today as they struggle with their now weary old ‘brand’ is that in the exhuberence of the early days they fired off rather too many of their big guns at once. Startling, nay, terrifying claims rolled out thick and fast; five foot sea level rises, mosquito plagues, blistering summers, droughts, floods, tidal waves, famines, mass extinctions…No More Snow! Not only have none of these things come to pass, they have exhausted people’s ability or willingness to be frightened. Not only was the damned product useless when it came to accurately predicting Armagiddeon, it was massively over-hyped!
With a few tragi-comical exceptions, like the ABC here in Australia, few self respecting media outlets are prepared to print the ‘press release’ verbatim (complete with absurd headline.) The love affair between the scaremongers and the media is over.
So next time you hear of some warmist academics holding a meeting about better ways to get their ‘message’ across, think of them as if they were slightly shabby ‘ad-men’ in a dreary little provincial agency wrestling with a dying brand.
It certainly makes me feel better!
Not if they’re reined in by Congress. The ray of sunshine is that many of the selected candidates on the GOP side are sceptics. A bit of defunding of the EPA would do wonders, both for the environment and the budget bottom line!
Good one, GM! You just proved that you haven’t been taking notice. The common people for years have been fed AGW propaganda, why any honest scientist has been side-lined, black listed, or even dismissed by the AGW cartel. Some of us common people needed a wake-up call, but now awake are quite capable of understanding some stuff (in spite of having no science experience beyond middle high school). Messrs Mann, Briffa, Jones et al, CANNOT hide the medieval warm period, the little ice age, the normal regular variation in the climatic cycle, or any other thing that is proven beyond doubt. We, the common people, know all about past. We even remember the prognostications of the Holdrens, Schneiders etc, of the 1970s when we were all going to die of frostbite!
Mr(s) GM, if you have data that proves the man-induced nature of global warming, climate change, climate disruption, then please produce it. But, here’s the caveat, let it be real data; non-homogenised, not anecdotal, not manipulated, not adjusted, not from weather stations that have been overrun by urban development or that are 1000 miles away, and not induced from tree rings when the growth is inconsistant with the KNOWN climate conditions. Oh yeah, and not lost.
“And soon, they’ll be on to the next big scare.”
“THE PLANET’S FREEZING!”
I agree with the zzzzzzzz. People are just tired of being bombarded with unconvincing ‘facts’ and directions about how to behave. Sceptics are right to say that climate disruption, or whatever the latest buzz word is, has become a religion.
Result: people like me have decided to just carry on regardless. Nothing we do is going to make a discernible difference so we might as well carry on being good citizens guided by our own internal morality. Once the spouting about how to behave comes from ‘on high’, it’s time to walk away.
GM;
Because those “regular citizens” have not at all been influenced by organized campaigns to discredit climate science – they came to the conclusion that it was false entirely on their own, completely independently>>
I can’t speak for others, but for myself, that is exactly correct. The first detailed document I ever read in regard to Global Warming was IPCC AR4. The misleading statements, the exagerated claims, the vague references made me suspiscious. I started asking questions, some dumb ones, some tough ones on various warmist blogs and soon learned that tough questions just disappear, or get edited and responded to out of context to make the questioner look foolish. The more I dug into the warmist literature, official and otherwise, the more discrepancies, exagerations, half truths and outright lies I found. I was a skeptic long before I discovered WUWT, not because of debunking articles, but because legitmate questions of the warmist literature are met not with answers or explanations, but with ridicule or are simply snipped out of existance. These are the classic signs of a cover up.
So yes GM, I did get to that conclusion all on my own, mostly by reading the very literature that you claim is the scientific consensus.
CO2 is logarithmic. If all you know about science is what that statement means, then you know enough to be a skeptic.
“GM says:
September 20, 2010 at 8:53 pm”
Not to worry, GM, the lust to
savedominate the World,manage it correctlyloot it andhelpenslave its peoples does not die easily, if ever.GM says:
September 20, 2010 at 8:53 pm
because there is absolutely no correlation between political and religious convictions and acceptance of AGW
The first rule of correlations is that correlation is not causation.
Even if there is a correlation between political beliefs and views on AGW, it would be highly unscientific to assume there was causation without very good cause. Being on the opposite side of the political spectrum would not be very good cause. It would be the worst sort of reasoning – from political stance.
I believe that you would struggle to find any strong correlation in any case. Too many AGW-sceptics are university educated, left-leaning conformists in every other situation except AGW.
GM says:
September 20, 2010 at 8:53 pm
“”Because, of course, the “regular citizens” and bloggers, are more competent climatologists than the people who have spent their entire lives studying the subject.””
Reply; Some of us regular citizens have been studying ALL aspects of the weather and climate puzzle for longer than the “competent climatologists” have spent studying how to game the CO2 scam for the profit of their handlers.
“”Because those “regular citizens” have not at all been influenced by organized campaigns to discredit climate science – they came to the conclusion that it was false entirely on their own, completely independently.””
Reply; Watching “the team” shift the recorded temperature data base to suit their own gaming plans, for the past 20 years while I have been trying to fit more pieces of the puzzle together than “the team” even knows about, most of what they just beginning to suspect that I already knew, they were suppressing as they wanted to play “in God mode” (using cheat codes) that allow them to control the game, unlimited funds, press releases, paid travel expenses to all of the important meetings, leveraged manipulation of journals and their editorial staff, selecting “team members” for their “peer reviews.”
It is hard to watch the gradual progression of “team” control over the progress of grant fund misdirection, from areas of study yielding the most truth on how the weather and climate works, into areas most profitable to their handlers. For years and not know the smell of what is rotten in Denmark.
Mixed cattle feces and urine is mild compared to the smells that came out of piles of hurricane Camile debris, containing tens of human bodies, and hundreds of rotting mixed livestock, and wild animals the second and third weeks in the high heat and humidity conditions I worked in assisting cleanup efforts.
Things are not dead yet downunder. The CEO of one of the worlds largest mining companies BHP has said its time for a carbon tax in Oz. What are the motives behind this is anyones guess. The Greens who are in cahoots with the current Labour government agrees. The opposition which 50% of Ozzies voted for are opposed.
It remains to seen what the outcome of all of this will be.
My comment is in the bin,
could dig it out again?
Reply: Requests such as this are a waste of space and moderator time. The spam bin gets checked regularly. ~ ctm
The scary thing is if George Monbiot was a happy guy today, it would mean the rest of us would be experiencing a repeat of the 1930s’ economic depression.
Blogs like WUWT and Climate Audit, and people like Monkton and Anthony, have helped expose the bad science and widespread fraud practiced by climate ‘scientists’ .
Slowly but surely, even the most tax grabbing of our political masters are realising this is a subject best left alone or rejected. Perhaps, a good analogy of today’s situation is that the original underdogs, the sceptic allies, are now in the equivalent of late 1943.
@Dennis Nikols, P. Geol.: Please… ‘pedants’, not ‘pendants’!
“… I don’t know. These failures have exposed not only familiar political problems, but deep-rooted human weakness. All I know is that we must stop dreaming about an institutional response that will never materialise and start facing a political reality we’ve sought to avoid. The conversation starts here. …”
I’m with R. de Haan. Too many of these comments make it sound as if the battle is over. I don’t think that George has gone away and I don’t think that the end of the problem is in sight. This isn’t a case of What is right, it’s Who is right, and George and his friends are still convinced that it isn’t the guys on our side of the argument.
Nuh. There is no victory yet — or, if there is, no one has told the N Y Times about it…
GM says: September 20, 2010 at 8:53 pm
“Because, of course, the “regular citizens” and bloggers, are more competent climatologists than the people who have spent their entire lives studying the subject.“
Often;
‘Learned men are the cisterns of knowledge, not the fountainheads’: Anonymous
“Because science is decided by popular vote and expertise matters nothing.”
They tried to decide by a ‘consensus’ of less than 100 people on a planet of 6 billion of which millions are informed and understand the science. Nice try.
“Because those “regular citizens” have not at all been influenced by organized campaigns to discredit climate science – they came to the conclusion that it was false entirely on their own, completely independently.”
Completely independently as they read the leaked emails and then started to think for themselves.
“I definitely see the logic”
As do I. You can not fool all of the people all of the time. You got away with fooling most of the people for over 10 years, that must be some kind of record; but alas, you can not fool all of the people all of the time.
That the leaked email and blogs did was to give the people the courage to speak out in the face of what had been an imposed doctrine of thought. Once they realized that they were not actually the only ones that though ‘different’ they began to combine their understanding, knowledge and research. The internet was the enabler; climate-gate was the common ground, the frame of reference, and yes the Google search term that the people had been lacking.
Equipped with the search term ‘climategate’, it did not take long for the people to find each other in the darkness.
Some of them found their way here.
I did.
So some ARE seeing the inevitability of failure of the whole CAGW farago.
Sorry I think the fight has just begun in earnest. Until such time as those that got their five minutes of ill gotten fame by promoting an untrue picture of the science to scare the masses, are properly investigated and, exposed along with their shoddy science, this is never over.
They will sit in the background making excuses, denying their culpability, dreaming up new ways to re-invent their glory days as the elite of Climate Science.
We need and the world deserves, a searching investigation of how the scientific process was circumvented, the publication and peer review process corrupted. Yes that will shame and blame and shake science, but it needs to be shaken and blame accepted by the culpable. Then and only then can science be re-built with rigorous checks and balances to ensure nothing like this happens again.
Too much, economically and politically, hangs on the veracity and purity of science to let the issue slide. The high stake in this issue was the agenda of central control and the creation of new economic prosperity and wealth for the few at the expense of many. Serving the interests of those behind the scene promoters and the “insiders” prospect of controlling the billions of dollars in funding, exploring Geo engineered solutions to control non existent or natural processes and problems.
God help humanity if such poor quality science was used to politically project us into accepting these “last resort” solutions (that must be undertaken with haste, as we are already on the path to doom and the clock is ticking) ?? Just as this propaganda has been promoted – by “scientists” ?/ and their fellow travelers.
GM: “Because, of course, the “regular citizens” and bloggers, are more competent climatologists than the people who have spent their entire lives studying the subject.”
I know – the indignity of those qualified specialists, sitting in universities, and losing the initiative to the Great Unwashed. But that’s what happened. Even the recent cases of sea ice blunders being raised in public are small examples of it. It just shouldn’t have happened, but it did, so get used to it.
Perhaps the specialists will learn the value of good honest scientific method – if they are prepared to give it a shot. But it would be a return to boring obscurity, less funding and far fewer papers in those prestigious journals.
GM said:
“Because, of course, the “regular citizens” and bloggers, are more competent climatologists than the people who have spent their entire lives studying the subject. Because science is decided by popular vote and expertise matters nothing.”
No GM you are dead wrong, the AGW fraud has and will affect us all and it will directly affect those least able to afford it, the poor will suffer because of the greed,fanaticism,dishonesty and arrogance of the self appointed new parasite class. Ordinary people have a moral duty to audit and check the rampant fraud and malpractice of the so called climate science cabal because if we do not then who will?
Ordinary people have exposed hundreds of examples of ignorance,stupidity, laziness and downright fraud within the insular and lavishly funded climate science community while this new ‘science’ sector has overlooked and even conspired to cover up fraud and bad practice and error.
The so called climate ‘science’ had its chance to be open and honest and fair but they chose the political way instead and now the climate ‘science’ industry is paying the price, a price they would not be paying if it were not for the actions of ordinary people.
All we want is the truth, all we have ever wanted is the truth. The AGW socio political movement demands such massive and lasting changes to our way of life and the damage will be so great if the theory is wrong that to gamble on the so called precautionary principle is too risky.
You may sneer at the ordinary citizen daring to get involved but it has been the so called ordinary people that have been behind many of the scientific and industrial advances of the last three hundred years.
I am proud to be an ordinary person, it is this group more than any other that has built the world we live in and given us the comforts we enjoy, yes we must trust those gifted scientists at the top but as my all time hero Ronald Reagan once said “trust but verify”. Trust has to be earned and the climate science community has destroyed that gift by its arrogant and selfish actions and now the onus is on those climate ‘scientists’ to earn that trust all over again.
The moral of the story is of course, never ever place unlimited faith and trust in a few people who promise to look after you interests, always ask questions, always verify and always doubt the consensus.
rbateman says:
September 20, 2010 at 10:21 pm (Edit)
Judging from the last 120 years of 4 climate panics, the Big Chill Out will eventually put many of the activists on the Next Ice Age scare. The timing of the ship jumping will depend entirely on how hard & fast the icing-down of the climate manifests itself.
Ah, that would be ‘Global Climate Disruption’, allowing a seamless shift to funding
pasturesicefields new.Get ready for re-reuns of ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ on TV.
All our fault of course.
People who want to grasp the true seriousness of our predicament should read this report of drowned polar bear washed up in Cornwall.
Geroge Monbiot’s newspaper, The Guardian, which has been loss-making for years (by design), is coming under increasing financial strain. The new government is withdrawing job advertisements from it (which was the previous means for the Labour government of funding the pro-Labour newspaper). A recent FOI request found that 86% of the recruitment advertising spend of the BBC (left leaning government-owned state broadcaster) was channelled to The Guardian (a newspaper with relatively low circulation). The BBC is coming under increasing scrutiny, no doubt this revenue too will be lost too.
So perhaps George is really crying at the realisation that he might lose his job.
I was talking with a small group of 20 somethings last week and I tested the waters with a comment about AGW in an attempt to gauge what they knew and how they felt. They were all out here for a short visit from the UK.
Surprise, surprise.
They were surprisingly well informed on the topic and few details escaped them. Each of them figuratively snorted at the whole “ridiculous concept of AGW” and quoted from Climategate, IPCC AR4, Glaciers etc. To them the whole debate was dead in the water now and indicated that most of their friends in the UK were of a similar opinion.
George is just catching the wave it would seem.
Sorry Richard, it wasn’t a polar bear. It turned out to be a cow! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/8014541/ITV-embarrassed-by-report-of-polar-bear-washed-up-on-beach.html
GM says:
September 20, 2010 at 8:53 pm
“Because science is decided by popular vote and expertise matters nothing. ”
Well – when one orginally starts the whole CAGW show by conducting “science” through press release, opinion polls, and the efforts of paid lobbyists, what other result is to be expected?
The Climate Change fiasco might be dead but the foul miasma arising from its rotting corpse continues to blight the political atmosphere. In England “Green” taxes are now expected to raise £50 billion annually, with petrol and diesel fuel being hit hard.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/liberaldemocrats/8014722/Motorists-and-holidaymakers-face-green-tax-rise-of-800.html
That’s a cracker. Mind you, it is a very good impersonation of a dead polar bear…
’you can’t polish a turd’
You can. And sell it for a very high price. (Ask any paleontologist. Coprolite alert!)
Just because one AGW fanatic writes one miserable article more-or-less throwing in the towel, the process itself is nowhere near ending. The “global warming” industry worldwide now consumes $500 billion a year, and has become a self-perpetuating economic force in its own right.
The tax-paying public observes a gap between what they are told and what they experience for themselves. We were told the arctic would be “ice free” in five years. That was in 2000. Were told rising sea levels would devastate vast areas of the country years ago, but those areas are obstinately still there, completely unaffected. We were told it was “inevitable” that our weather would get hotter and drier every year until we enjoyed a sub-tropical climate in Scotland. Then we had the coldest, wettest, two winters in a row for nearly 100 years.
How do politicians address the growing gap between what they said would happen and what has actually happened? How do they explain the gap between their climate scientists’ hysterical claims and what they can prove in a measurable, repeatable, scientific method? Simple – they don’t. It’s actually impossible to get any politician to debate any of their policies which they have based on fraudulent climate science. They all just act as if the “science is settled”, ignore all the contrary evidence, and carry on regardless. It’s as if a veterinary surgeon based all his treatment on the “proven” science of witchcraft, and refused to discuss any medical theory other than paganism.
Policies based on corrupt climate science have appalling consequences, That’s the real devastation. From poor Africans now starving because giant companies have taken over their land to grow bio-fuels, to the destruction of the British countryside wrought by the building of thousands of useless bird-shredding wind turbines, to all those now unable to heat their homes because of soaring carbon taxes, this is just some of the real destruction flowing from the evil global warming fraud.
Against all that, what difference does it make if one day some AGW-loving columnist whines a bit in his article?
“producing a full house of science deniers.”
Doesn’t look as if Moonbat has learned or changed very much…
It’s a standard military stratagem to appear to run away, draw on your jubilant foe and then outflank, encircle and annihilate them. The Parthians were very good at it. So I too am with R. de Haan – don’t assume it’s all over bar the shouting. Here in Europe we are facing enormous tax increases along with social and personal consequences based on these discredited theories and it’s certain that the politicians will not let go of the myth easily – it’s worth far too much to them and their corporate backers.
George Monbiot asks:
Mr. Monbiot: if you read here, try to be just a tiny bit of a real science mind and read and understand what the work and papers of Ferenc Miskolczi on planetary atmospheres are telling you. That’s a starter. This is empirical science that I know you are not use to, you have preferred the GCM simulation route. Apparently the temp change came from elsewhere, the sun, albedo change, current changes, some record and station placement errors as UHI, all of the above, your guess is as good as mine, but it seems not GHG’s. I’m probably like you, from where then? That is why we have real empirical science, with all of the messiness of actual measurements, to answer such questions, but not your kind of computer generated / political “science”, it has been flawed for a long, long time. You say you see human weaknesses and most including me see human strengths, thank God. We will adapt, correct, learn, and survive just fine, for that is what we do best.
CRS, Dr.P.H. says: …Tourism gases?? I’ll hold the wisecracks!
Such self control! I never could “hold em”, especially after a street burrito…
USEPA will make their move shortly, now that cap and trade legislation is dead. Watch for it. My clients are quietly preparing for the eventuality of carbon regulation. EPA has all the authority they need, backed up by the US Supreme Court.
November…
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/buck-up-or-sit-in-the-truck/
I was undecided about George Monbiot until I watched a video of him ‘debate’ with Ian Plimer some time ago, with the aid of a cycnical and egotistical meeja person whose name eludes me. I was stunned by Monbiot’s extreme rudeness, plus the crass ‘me too’ echo of the meeja person, to Prof Plimer and could never take seriously anything Monbiot says or writes ever again.
As to GM, he keeps turning up with the same tired and egregious nonsense, like a kid knocking on a door, shouting something rude then standing back and waiting for the argument.
I, too, believe that the battle for sanity and truth regarding the earth’s climate is far from won. ‘Green taxes’ are currently a juicy low-hanging fruit and too extraordinarily tempting for politicians to resist. The UK ‘Climate Minister’ has just announced that individuals who actually have the termerity to earn money will pay an extra £800 each in ‘Green’ taxes on flying, petrol and other fuels so that those who don’t earn below a specified level will not pay tax at all.
Finally, the MSM fails to report the huge storm that stretches from South America, across Antarctica to Australia and is wreaking havoc in Tasmania and New Zealand, just as the extreme cold snap that much of the Pacific coast of South America went unreported by the MSM, indicating that a very long battle for truth and scientific honesty still lies ahead.
Paul Deacon, Christchurch, New Zealand says:
“…The Guardian, which has been loss-making for years (by design), is coming under increasing financial strain…
So perhaps George is really crying at the realisation that he might lose his job…”
Correct. the Guardian is a rubbish paper, and it’s going downhill fast. Last year it made a whacking great £74 million loss, and had to sell of all of its other papers, mostly local titles, to prop up the main paper. With such a drain on its resources, it will be either declared bankrupt or, like the London Standard, be taken over soon for £1.
And talking of massive losses…
LOSS-MAKING UK WIND TURBINE MANUFACTURER TO BE DUMPED ON AMERICANS
Clipper Windpower runs out of puff, and is set for takeover
Clipper Windpower, the London-listed wind turbine maker which has received millions of pounds in government grants, looks set to be taken over by US engineering giant UTC. Clipper said that it “expects to face significant liquidity strain within the next year” and was “seeking additional sources of capital”. As part of this UTC, which bailed Clipper out with a £126.5 million equity injection in January to take a 49.9% stake, said it could be interested in a making a full-scale takeover bid.
Clipper shares, which floated on AIM five years ago at 190p today slumped 16¾p to a new low of 28p valuing the company at just £60 million. UTC paid 150p a share for its stake. UTC owns Pratt & Whitney aircraft engines, Sikorsky helicopters, Otis lifts and escalators and Carrier heating and air-conditioning.
Former prime minister Gordon Brown and Labour leadership candidate Ed Miliband (then energy & climate change secretary) attended a ground-breaking ceremony on Tyneside in February for Clipper’s new turbine factory. This was backed by a £4.5 million government grant and was meant to produce a prototype new turbine named Britannia aimed mainly at offshore UK wind-farms.
But the wind industry has suffered a huge downturn since the financial crisis with Clipper particularly hard hit because it was unable to provide warranties on its turbines. In the US, which is Clipper’s main market, tax breaks for wind farms run out at the end of this year and there are doubts whether America’s President Barack Obama will be able to introduce fresh finance initiatives for green energy this autumn.
Clipper is burning cash. At the end of June it had $140 million (£89.8 million) in the bank by the end of August that had fallen to $86 million. It also said first-half revenues are likely to have halved to around $150 million and losses for the six months to end-June will be between $26 million and $30 million. It now expects turbine sales for the full year to be at the lower end of the 140 to 180 range.
Sign of the times?
When they were busy inventing global warming, someone else was busy inventing the internet, web, and blogs.
The internet is helping to reinforce what Howard Bloom calls, one of the pillars of healthy capitalism, namely, the people’s freedom to make righteous protest against harmful and unhealthy things.
People didn’t deny and refuse to see. They protested against what they saw.
This led greens to start wondering about putting democracy on hold, because they weren’t getting the support of the people. Yes Mr. Dictator, the people are protesting the streets, what shall we do?
Protests in the form of citizens blocking coal trains are OK.
Protests in the form of citizens writing blogs questioning why the IPCC doesn’t make sense, are not OK.
Perhaps the greens could try listening to protesters for a change, rather than trying to shush them up.
Cassandra King @12:11. How I agree with you.
GM:
Where were your vaunted climate scientists hiding while the IPCC was out pushing a false doomsday scenario? Out of the so-called “consensus” few had the courage to speak out. What manner of scientists are these?
Poor old Moonbat. He is going to have to find something new to earn his fees.
BUT the juggernaut is fuelled up with our taxes and being driven towards the cliff by politicians, bankers and consulting firms (all fresh from the toxic loans crisis) and won’t stop just because they are wrong. In UK we have a Secretary of State for Energy & Climate Change, the multimillionaire Chris Huhne (rhymes with Loon) who is orgasmic in his desire to raise ‘green’ taxes and build windfarms everywhere. Our Green Prime Minister’s father in law is getting £300k+ p.a. extra for letting his land be ‘windfarmed’ and so it goes.
We will have to fight for years yet unless someone can come up with a new scare to displace this one. Solar flares anyone?
@ R. de Haan says:
September 20, 2010 at 8:51 pm
Anthony, thank you very much for the article but I think we are creating the false impression here that the MSM climate change scare has been overcome.
This is IMO absolutely not the case.
The government of my former country for example is still in the process of building a 100 billion Euro water defense because the politicians believe there will be a drastic rise of ocean levels by 2050 and in the USA governmental budgets for climate spending are beyond belief.
=================================
Absolutely agree. This won’t be over till there is no more money to be made by lawyers and politicians.
“All I know is that we must stop dreaming about an institutional response that will never materialise and start facing a political reality we’ve sought to avoid. The conversation starts here”
The political reality of needing to actually have a conversation with the people to discuss and justify everything instead of just steamrolling over them. Yep. Sucks that it didn’t work. Damned bloggers.
Steve Keohane says:
September 20, 2010 at 8:39 pm
Thanks for all you have done, Anthony. The fantasy that big industry is funding some anti-Climate Change movement is amazing.
————Reply:
I agree, but there is more–indeed, “big industry” has funded CAGW, not fought it; check out who started and continues to fund the CRU and similar institutions; and CAGW certainly has the financial backing of big government. I get no check from big oil, big government, or big anything–I’m just a piddly has-been geologist that has a nose for stench and lies, and Monbiot is the stenchiest I’ve run across in a long time.
And while I agree the battle is far from over, it is generally true that the enemies of truth will turn on each other and fight themselves into oblivion; history is replete with examples. So if I were to answer Monbiot’s question “So what do we do now?”, I’d say continue with the infighting. It will decimate your forces and truth will eventually triumph. Sadly, you’ll just be on the wrong side of it.
“Perhaps we should have made people feel better about their lives. Or worse. Perhaps we should have done more to foster hope. Or despair. Perhaps we were too fixated on grand visions. Or techno-fixes. Perhaps we got too close to business. Or not close enough. The truth is that there is not and never was a strategy certain of success, as the powers ranged against us have always been stronger than we are.”
Where did you go wrong? Granted, you did have the MSM behind you with a constant barrage of scare stories, and you had Gore’s scareumentary, and assuring people that “the debate is over”. You had (and still do) government-sponsored “scientists” being paid to “find” evidence for CAGW/CC, and once-proud scientific organizations like NAS and AAAS making sweeping pronouncements in support of it (without bothering to ask their membership what they thought), and a whole host of NGOs like Greenpeace and UCS jumping on the bandwagon. In short, you just about had it all, but the one thing you didn’t have, and which was your biggest failure was lack of control over the internet. This was what allowed the truth to leak out in various ways. That mysterious “power ranged against you” was in fact, the truth. Perhaps you might want to reacquaint yourself with it, Georgie.
No, it’s not over. The CAGW/CC/CD juggernaut has been stopped in its tracks, is surrounded on all sides and will continue to flail and inflict whatever damage it can.
The saddest thing about this whole affair is that the AGW Lobby, including the leadership of the National Academy of Sciences, is willing to claim that there is a “scientific consensus” or “consensus of scientists” and that the rest of us should accept it. They press upon this ancient fallacy of appeal to authority and they do so furiosly. I am shocked to discover that Lysenkoism has an American cousin.
Are you really suggesting that climategate (or indeed any of the many other “gates”) are part of some organised campaign? The only “organised campaign” I am aware of is the one to cover climategate with whitewash. Perhaps you should be thankful that most of the public don’t have the time and inclination to actually read the e-mails for themselves, directly from the source.
I really don’t understand what George thinks has been happening. Here in the UK, at least, he and his ilk have politicians, NGO’s, the MSM and big business all singing from more or less the same hymn sheet (witness climategate). How much more support does he want? Perhaps he should be asking himself why, even with all this support, he and his allies are still not getting what they want. Judging from some of the comments I would have to ask if they even know what they want?
How many climate scientists does it take to change a light-bulb?
None, BUT, they DO have full consensus that it WILL change.
“Climate change enlightenment was fun while it lasted”. Oh, really, George? Fun for whom, exactly?
Monbiot: if you want an intelligent debate, please drop stupid terms like “ecofascism”.
…and while we’re about it, how about these gems?…
“AGW sceptics are equal to Holocaust Deniers”, G. Monbiot
“People who fly are like pedophiles”, G. Monbiot
“The old don’t care because they’re going to die soon”, G. Monbiot
…there’s many more, but life’s too short.
When it comes to the use of stupid terms, you, George, are an expert. And has it ever occurred to you that one issue that may be given you problems with the public is the rank hypocrisy of green movement, the evidence for which you provide a-plenty? For example, exactly how many journalists will the Guardian be sending on a nice little Mexican trip to Cancun, and will you (once again) be clocking up some more long-distance air miles, after you claimed you would “never fly again” following your North American book selling tour – which itself followed your “people who fly are like pedophiles” statement?
You really appear ignorant when you use the word “science”. It’s as if we are all supposed to genuflect, and meditate, and pray whenever the word is mentioned. Science has an historical and social context, and by the way you are paid to know things like that. There’s a difference between a strong scientific hypothesis, and a weak scientific hypothesis. So-called “man-made global warming,” which is mostly based on questionable computer models, is a weak hypothesis. The expectation that it could be used as a basis upon which, as you once said, “redesign humanity” was pretty ridiculous.
Claiming that “Greens are a puny force by comparison to industrial lobby groups,” is even more patently wrong.
The planet-wrecking “greens” have an inordinate unelected power that has shaped a vast amount of policy, and all the current political delusions of the West. However, as you have noticed, these powers are crumbling a little bit. “Green” western philosophy and policies have never being in danger of being near a vote, something that may have impressed China, but delusional if anyone expected that China will ever do anything to change its path of (following our example) developing as fast as it can. The fact that most Western industries – and the larger the industrial monolith the truer this is – are eagerly playing into the hands of all the legislation-subsidising green policies are plain to see, though you don’t seem to see it.
Let’s face it, the greens couldn’t have done a worse job of presenting their case if they’d tried; fronted by jet-setting rich men living lives of luxury, and supported mainly by affluent, western, leftist, high-consuming people who don’t follow their own bossy advice on all sorts of topics, the “climate change” movement has been a fiasco.
Then there’s the sloppy “science” from arrogant people, who demand deference and resent scrutiny and open debate, the hysterical and disrespectful comparisons with Holocaust denial, and adverts for expensive, gas-guzzling cars and cheap flights even in pro-“green” newspapers like the Guardian itself.
George Monbiot, the Guardian columnist and predictor of the world’s end, has undergone a metamorphosis of Kafkaesque proportions, or so we are to believe. Never mind poor Gregor Samsa, who awoke one morning to find himself transmogrified into a monstrous insect; Monbiot has made an even more remarkable cross-species leap. Some time during the past five years he went to bed an hysteric, the closest thing Britain had to a nutty Nostradamus, and awoke to find himself labeled a man of reason, a “defender of truth” no less, who is praised on the dust-jacket of his latest book for possessing a “dazzling command of science” (only by Naomi Klein, admittedly, but still – HA!).
How has this happened? How is it that George Monbiot, who still writes the same old apocalyptic nonsense (think Book of Revelations but without the hot pokers or the hot sex), can now pose – no, it’s more than that, – be hailed – as a “scientific visionary”? His metamorphosis from green-tinted hater of all things modern, to the man with a “dazzling command of science,” reveals a great deal about the politics of environmentalism, and how it has added a gloss of “scientific fact” to long-standing middle-class prejudices against modern society.
Here’s the reason why George Monbiot and other editors in the Guardian will keep pushing the “global warming” story:
This is Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger in an interview with the left-wing Hindu newspaper:
http://www.hindu.com/2010/09/20/stories/2010092052441100.htm
…”A year ago we decided the environment was the biggest story of our lives. So we have six reporters doing the environment – one in China, one in America and four in the U.K. And then we built a network of environmental sites. We aggregated and became part of a network, with about 20 or 30 sites. A huge amount of editing and resources goes into the environment. That’s like saying, almost regardless of revenue, it’s going to be such an important subject”…
And what about the global warming fraud itself? The whole thing started out 38 years ago as the “Greenhouse Gas Theory”. And in no time at all, it was proved, by real scientists, to be a really flawed theory. Anyway, this is one of my favourite quotes, and it’s a beauty straight from the horse’s mouth, the IPCC itself:
“A number of diagnostic tests have been proposed…but few of them have been applied to a majority of the models currently in use. Moreover, it is not yet clear which tests are critical for constraining future projections (of warming). Consequently, a set of model metrics that might be used to narrow the range of plausible climate change feedbacks and climate sensitivity has yet to be developed.”
IPCC AR4 report, section 8.6, page 640.
Note the use of the most important word in that statement – “plausible”. On that single word, the whole theory collapses.
One further challenge is to undo the mindset damage of CAGW perpetrated on innocent children by socialist re-engineering educators who desired to create “Eco Warriors” to re-educate parents and bring home to them the error of their ways!
These so called “teachers” have done untold damage to young minds to the extent that some children just parrot the meme, thinking they are saving a planet from rotten capitalist humans that are raping the earth. How will those kids feel about science and scientists when they inevitably discover they were conned and their trust suborned.
Parents will need to be careful to explain the truth and hopefully the media will finally undo the damage that has been done and help parents with truthful reports to expose the lies and the deceptions that falsely claimed their trust and action.
The day I hear the Royal Societies and the Scientific Associations working with rather than against parents by exposing the errors and propaganda and establishing a proper code of ethics of process and procedure to clean their own house, will be the day we can start to build trust.
Sceptics are not against good science, environmental responsibility and helping others and I do hope that we will all be able to work together for a cleaner, brighter future where children are nurtured in the values of truth and respect for all including their parents.
GM:
Because, of course, the “regular citizens” and bloggers, are more competent climatologists than the people who have spent their entire lives studying the subject.
Yes, GM, the “climatologists” you refer to have indeed spent quite a lot of time studying and generating “Post Normal Science” = Political Science = Propaganda. GM, you are their target, so you should be impressed!
Mr. Monbiot is simply acknowledging reality:
We have proven ourselves to not be worthy of his enlightened gospel of doom.
The apocalypse is not coming, and he is unhappy about it.
Our 13 year old grandson came to stay recently. He insisted that CO2 ‘pollution’ in the atmosphere was 5%! He was rather quiet when we showed him some basic research on the internet and realised that his teacher had been lying to him….not to put too fine a point on it.
A few quotes that also caught my attention:
“An analysis published a few days ago by the campaigning group Sandbag estimates the amount of carbon that will have been saved by the end of the second phase of the EU’s emissions trading system, in 2012; after the hopeless failure of the scheme’s first phase we were promised that the real carbon cuts would start to bite between 2008 and 2012. So how much carbon will it save by then? Less than one third of 1%.
&
“Missing from the proposed cuts are the net greenhouse gas emissions we have outsourced to other countries and now import in the form of manufactured goods. Were these included in the UK’s accounts, alongside the aviation, shipping and tourism gases excluded from official figures, Britain’s emissions would rise by 48%. Rather than cutting our contribution to global warming by 19% since 1990, as the government boasts, we have increased it by about 29%. It’s the same story in most developed nations. Our apparent success results entirely from failures elsewhere.”
So, for all of out British and EU friends out there, how much are you paying for this apparent failure?
Is the fight over? A George response to a post in the same article.
GeorgeMonbiot : 20 September 2010 8:45PM
“Reply to Mitzcici: post of – why not put the energy and time into battles that have some chance of being won?
“And abandon the issue that undermines anything we might achieve in the other battles?”
Kind of says it all.
More George Monbiot…
“Scientist in climate change ‘cover-up’ storm told to quit”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1230635/Scientist-climate-change-cover-storm-told-quit.html
“I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/nov/23/global-warming-leaked-email-climate-scientists
“So was I wrong to have called, soon after this story broke, for Jones’s resignation?(14) I think, on balance, that I was. He said some very stupid things…
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/07/07/filth-and-fury/
“The Smearing of an Innocent man” (Rajendra Pachauri)
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/08/26/the-smearing-of-an-innocent-man/
“I was wrong about veganism. Let them eat meat – but farm it properly”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/06/meat-production-veganism-deforestation
But sometime he get i right….
“Are we really going to let ourselves be duped into this solar panel rip-off?”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/01/solar-panel-feed-in-tariff
“A Great Green Rip-Off”
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/03/01/a-great-green-rip-off/
“Solar PV has failed in Germany and it will fail in the UK”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/mar/11/solar-power-germany-feed-in-tariff
“There is no ‘green treachery’ in questioning this solar panel rip-off”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/mar/05/solar-feed-in-tariff
…and last some funny bits from James Delingpole:
“‘We have lost the climate war!’ admits Monbiot, surrendering his ceremonial Luger”
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100054559/we-have-lost-the-climate-war-admits-monbiot-surrendering-his-ceremonial-luger/
George Monbiot says: “The conversation starts here”.
That’s the problem, George. There is no conversation. The CAGW lobby merely talk at people and appear to hate the idea of a conversation.
This approach has hugely damaged the reputation of scientists per se and I say that with a heavy heart as the public needs to believe that the scientific community behaves with integrity and tells the truth. Many scientists contribute to Anthony’s blog, and the information they provide – and the generally even-handed way in which they provide it – sets an example for the so-called flagship journals, such as Nature, to follow.
As a man-in-the-street with an interest in science I used to take New Scientist as it dealt with scientific subjects at a level that I could understand. Scientific news from the frontier that Joe Public could get a handle on. Not any more – I now no longer trust that publication because it will not have a genuine conversation about CAGW and adopts a breathtakingly one-sided approach to the issue.
Elsewhere, the reputation of the mainstream media lies in tatters with just a few journalists with enough courage and clout to maintain the other side of the conversation. Nowhere has the departure from accepted professional journalistic practice been so profound as at the BBC. Even John Humphries – a kind of Walter Cronkite type figure for those non-UK readers – has lapsed into an unquestioning and sadly ill-informed view of CAGW which he brings into stories about the environment and, of course, the weather.
So actually, George, the conversation does NOT begin at the end of your column. It began right here, when Anthony started a knowledgable, balanced, investigative and gentlemanly blog to bring the other side of the debate to the world; and that conversation has been carried on by scientists, non-scientists, believers and non-believers ever since.
So thank you to Anthony and to all the contributors who keep the conversation well-informed, up-to-date and often amusing.
The conversation, George, has been running for some time. The question is – would you like to join it?
As a currently unemployed, former “utitlity worker” (engineer), I rue the day I run into someone…physically, who gives me that “shill for the power/oil/etc. industry” line to my face.
How long do they put you in jail for breaking any parts on another human being?
Seriously, the crowd that is so into “sensitivity”, have they ever considered that they may be wrong? Have they thought that some of us, gradually drifting into poverty, might be getting pretty TESTY about this sort of nonsense? (Oh, sorry, I used the term “think” there, or the past tense thereof. For most of the AGW crowd, “think” is in the past tense, isn’t it?)
I only wish Chris Huhne, the Lib. Dims environment minister, and the rest of the Coalition knew that the AGW project was dead. I fear there’s a lot more stupidity and economic pain still to come. Beliefs (memes) are very difficult to eradicate.
Being the “TV Viewer” that I am, I will know that the battle is actually tipping,
when I start seeing new shows without the ever present “Global Warming” warnings at the end, and possibly a program or two asking the question, “Does the Sun control the climate ?”
Perhaps an hour devoted to the now proven false claims of the hoaxing experts.
A comparison to hoaxes of the past. ( Overpop, DDT, Peak( whatever), Cold Fusion)
Maybe replace the Gore rants with one of Monckton’s entertaining presentations.
“It is all over but the shouting” and the legislation.
Still there is a certain perverse pleasure derived from watching them flail, even if it has not yet penetrated the halls of government.
charles nelson says:
September 20, 2010 at 10:26 pm
I agree with many people that climate change alarmism is a kind of modern, secular religion for many of its ordinary followers but I have long suspected that those at the top end of the AGW hierarchy think of it as a ‘brand’……”
Very nice summary. I enjoyed reading and I agree.
E.M.Smith says:
September 21, 2010 at 2:05 am
CRS, Dr.P.H. says: …Tourism gases?? I’ll hold the wisecracks!
Such self control! I never could “hold em”, especially after a street burrito…
USEPA will make their move shortly, now that cap and trade legislation is dead. Watch for it. My clients are quietly preparing for the eventuality of carbon regulation. EPA has all the authority they need, backed up by the US Supreme Court.
November…
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/buck-up-or-sit-in-the-truck/
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REPLY:
Congressional elections in November 2012 won’t matter a bit. The US EPA is a cabinet-level agency, answering to the Obama administration and not Congress.
Some in Congress bristle that “nobody voted for the EPA,” but in fact, that is exactly what happens in a presidential election. Pres. George W. Bush hamstrung EPA enforcement during his tenure, so Obama and his group (Browner, Hansen, Jackson) aim to even things up.
From my perspective (and I have a catbird’s seat), EPA will act in the next few weeks. I’m not sure how much of the House and Senate that Obama has already written off, but he is basically just phoning it in at this time, planning on being a one-term president.
GM says:
September 20, 2010 at 8:53 pm:
Your ignorant and arrogant comments about “ordinary citizens” are the hallmark of the elitist ideologues that make up the ‘consensus’ of climate science and which spelled their doom from day one. From other comments, I gather you are a professor – bully for you- but I suspect from your fluffy literary style of sarcasm and the fact you have to take your cues from The Guardian you aren’t a scientist unless it is one of those of the social artifacts that needs to borrow the term “science”, in the same way despotic nations add “democratic” to their country name (physics, chemistry, geology – the real basis for climate science, need not hang the science sign on their portals). So you see, you yourself are an ordinary bloke in the climate science game. Also, did you know that the term climatologist was underlined in red in “Word” when you typed it prior to 2007?
Now for the final blow. You have been a visitor to this site sufficiently long to know that a fair number of these “ordinary citizens” are in fact highly intelligent physicists, chemists, mathematicians, geologists (paleontologists, oceanographers, glaciologists…), historians, archeologists, engineers, meteorologists and others that know more than a thing or two about the climate, past and present, on this and other planets. You are among your betters with the scientists and ordinary citizens who contribute to this blog.
GM
I, being pretty reclusive, not watching TV or reading newspapers, had written AGW off way back.
I didn’t think it had legs so I put it to the back of my mind until a few years back when I discovered that somehow it had somehow gained traction.
What big industry coloured my perception back in the late ’70s/early ’80s?
DaveE.
gena –
did u see how the Tele, while mocking ITV, managed to include:
“There are around 25,000 polar bears left in the wild and their existence is threatened by global warming.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/8014541/ITV-embarrassed-by-report-of-polar-bear-washed-up-on-beach.html
commenters are setting the Tele straight…
Perhaps the most vile of all possible misguided &/or misleading environmental ethics:
“GeorgeMonbiot
20 September 2010 8:45PM
Mitzcici:
“why not put the energy and time into battles that have some chance of being won?”
And abandon the issue that undermines anything we might achieve in the other battles?”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/20/climate-change-negotiations-failure?showallcomments=true#comment-7726254
My opposition to this attitude [from my perspective as hardcore environmentalist, climate science auditor, liberal, ecologist, etc.] is absolute.
Everyone check out Delingpole’s latest post at Telegraph.co.uk. What follows is an excerpt:
First Al Gore admitted it. Now it’s Monbiot’s turn. Tomorrow, in a ceremony on Luneberg Heath an ashen-faced Oberstgruppenfuhrer Monbiot will be handing over his baton, his pearl handled Luger and his death’s head fruit-paring knife to General Delingpole in token of his abject, total, humiliating surrender in the great Climate Wars.
“Tell you what, old man. Why don’t you put this to good use? We’ll all look the other way,” General Delingpole will reply, sliding the Luger back across the table towards Monbiot, together with a couple of rounds (just in case he misses first time) (hollow tipped, just to be absolutely sure of the right results).
Sept 22 2010
Continuing the best traditions of Ad-hominem attacks, see this article in today’s Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/sep/21/climate-scientists-christopher-monckton
It seems a mob of 29 “global warming” climate scientists, including Mann and Hansen, have ganged up to give Monckton a beating. Apparently, Monkton’s assertions are trashed because he is not a member of the House of Lords, he is not a scientist, and all his statements about the climate are “very misleading”, “profoundly wrong”, “simply false”, “chemical nonsense”, and “cannot be supported by climate physics”.
Guardian readers are so ecstatically happy that they’ve surpassed themselves in their self-appointed right to insult Monkton. Their comments include such pearls of wisdom as: “he is so open-minded his brains have fallen out”.
” Environmentalists tend to blame themselves for these failures.”
I’m sorry, what?! Environmentalists have been looking everywhere except themselves for someone to blame – ‘well-organised oil-funded deniers trained by the tobacco lobbyists’. Whereas indeed they should have been blaming themselves and their inability to produce robust research.
With a background such as the following you’d think he would be a little wiser.
George Monbiot:
Early life
George Monbiot grew up in Henley-on-Thames in South Oxfordshire, in a large country house that backed onto Peppard Common. His family is descended from French aristocrats, the Ducs de Coutard, who fled their estates outside Tours in the Loire Valley in 1789 during the French Revolution, changing the family name from Beaumont.[3] His father, Raymond Geoffrey Monbiot, is a businessman who headed the Conservative Party’s trade and industry forum,[1] while his mother, Rosalie—the elder daughter of Roger Gresham Cooke[4]—is a Conservative councillor who led South Oxford district council for a decade.[5] Monbiot was educated at Stowe School in Buckinghamshire, an independent school, and won an Open Scholarship to Brasenose College, Oxford.
[edit]Career
After graduating, he joined the BBC Natural History Unit as a radio producer, making natural history and environmental programmes. He transferred to the BBC’s World Service, where he worked briefly as a current affairs producer and presenter, before leaving to research and write his first book.[6]
Working as an investigative journalist, he travelled in Indonesia, Brazil, and East Africa. His activities led to his being made persona non grata in several countries[7] and being sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia in Indonesia.[8] In these places, he was also shot at,[9] beaten up by military police,[9] shipwrecked[9] and stung into a poisoned coma by hornets.[10] He came back to work in Britain after being pronounced clinically dead in Lodwar General Hospital in north-western Kenya, having contracted cerebral malaria.[11]
In Britain, he joined the roads protest movement and was often called to give press interviews. He was denounced as “nothing but a bandwagoner”[citation needed] and a “media tart”[12] by groups such as Green Anarchist and Class War. He was attacked by security guards, who allegedly drove a metal spike through his foot, smashing the middle metatarsal bone. His injuries left him in hospital. Sir Crispin Tickell, a former British diplomat at the United Nations, who was then Warden at Green College, Oxford, made the young protester a fellow, so that he had an office to organise his campaign from.[13] He was an active member of the Pure Genius!! campaign and co-founded The Land is Ours, which has occupied land all over the country. Its first notable success was in 1997, when it occupied thirteen acres (five hectares) of prime real estate on the river in London upon which owners Diageo intended to build a superstore. The protesters beat Diageo in court, built an “eco-village” and held on to the land for six months.[14]
Among his best-known articles are his critique of David Bellamy’s climate science,[15] his description of an encounter with a police torturer in Brazil,[16] his attack on libertarian interpretations of genetics[17] his discussion of the ethics of outsourcing,[18] and his attack on the politics of Bob Geldof and Bono.[19]
He has held visiting fellowships or professorships at the universities of Oxford (environmental policy), Bristol (philosophy), Keele (politics), Oxford Brookes (planning), and East London (environmental science).
“He came back to work in Britain after being pronounced clinically dead in Lodwar General Hospital in north-western Kenya, having contracted cerebral malaria.”
Crypto-Zombie .
Haven’t been around for a while but came across this superb post by happenstance. Indeed it appears to be the coffin nail quote of the climate campaign. And to think as Anthony aptly points out it was accomplished by a rag tag bunch of bloggers and Lutherin-like doubters. David did slew Goliath, and the city rested in peace… for a while.