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. ”
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.