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
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/
=========
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.