Via email press release:
A new paper at SPPI looks at the history of extreme weather events.
The on-going claims of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming have been ramped up again lately because of the opportunities presented by the heat wave in Russia and the floods in Pakistan, which are also being claimed as attributable to anthropogenic CO2. If the amount spent on global warming were to be diverted to mitigating and preventing the worst effects of natural disasters, then the desperate plight of the people of Pakistan would be relieved more quickly.
The paper can be downloaded here: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/extreme_weather_extreme_claims.html
The Author, Dennis Ambler, concludes:
Extreme Weather – The Blame Game
The Aztecs had sophisticated irrigation systems and “astrolonomical” observatories, (apparently a mix of astrology and astronomy), to attempt to predict the weather and reservoirs. But the unseasonal frosts and cold, followed by severe, prolonged drought, may have taken them to the brink of collapse. Once the climate became more benign again, they praised their gods with human sacrifice.
“When rainfall and agriculture had resumed, the Aztecs responded by massively increasing the number of human sacrifices to their rain god Tlaloc. It is thought that hundreds of thousands of people were sacrificed.”
In the Little Ice Age, witchcraft was blamed for the devastating climate:
Fagan’s The Little Ice Age (Basic Books, 2000):
“Witchcraft accusations soared, as people accused their neighbors of fabricating bad weather…. Sixty-three women were burned to death as witches in the small town of Wisensteig in Germany in 1563 at a time of intense debate over the authority of God over the weather.”
“Almost invariably, a frenzy of prosecutions coincided with the coldest and most difficult years of the Little Ice Age, when people demanded the eradication of the witches they held responsible for their misfortunes.”
These days we don’t blame witchcraft for the weather, instead we blame it on our emissions of carbon dioxide, describing it as a pollutant that must be controlled by Government taxes and vilifying anyone who dares to challenge the orthodoxy.
We ignore thousands of years of climate evidence, in favour of an agenda based upon a century and a half of sometimes distorted and often-disputed temperature records, coming out of a known Little Ice Age and we call it “Science”.
Have we really left the Dark Ages behind?
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Like the Aztecs, The Moche, in what is now Peru, suffered the same fate. The local climate changed. Must have been all those SUV’s and patio heaters belching Co2 and destroying the planet. *sigh*
Climate Disruption has a very long history. You might even say it’s as old as the hills.
Man’s history has had it all: Cllimate cooling, warming, drying and soaking.
It’s always been somebody’s fault. It’s a gods doing, it’s mans doing, it’s lack of proper sacrifice, it’s the wrong gods, etc.
The only thing new is the way it is packaged for sale, and the price that is paid for the sacred sacrificial snake oil to control it.
Don’t look now, but there they go again, pointing the bony finger at us, demanding we sacrifice our everything to save the planet.
Have we really left the Dark Ages behind?
NO
Have not progressed in at least 3000 years, still fighting, killing, waring with one another.
Humans, the slowest learners on the planet.
Nothing has changed.
“Almost invariably, a frenzy of prosecutions coincided with the coldest and most difficult years of the Little Ice Age, when people demanded the eradication of the witches they held responsible for their misfortunes.”
Once the climate became more benign again, they praised their gods with human sacrifice.
I guess they were looking for balance…
Good question, and the answer is – No.
The distortion of data and the misrepresentation of the findings by Greenstrife, Fiends of the Earth, Governments and the media finds a ready market in the minds of those whose education is at best partial and whose zeal probably exceeds that of the witch-finders and accusers. As an aside, most of the accusations against women were over inheritance, land and property – I wonder what the current crop of accusers are really after?
As I remember it, Marvin Harris claims that the real reason for the human sacrifices was to enhance the food supply. The sacrifices were mostly prisoners of war and were eaten afterwards.
Interesting parallel, anyway.
Comparing science with burning witches and human sacrifice? This must mark a new high point in this site’s continued vilification of science and scientists. I know Watts didn’t write this vile slur, but by repeating it without comment, he shares some responsibility for it.
Human memory is short and selective. More alarmist ‘research’ is reported every day. the latest is the loss of 20% of all plant species due to habitat loss. (presumably our fault and climate change). What is not reported is that we do not know how many plant species there are on the planet so claims of 20% loss is a guess. Deforestation of rainforest is claimed as the prime cause of species loss. But, NASA has shown, through satellite surveys, that within ten years of clearing an area of rainforest it has recovered. Tree life in the rainforest is about 200 or so years but the forest is millions of years old so how many generations have there been of each species. Also the indigenous natives used to use a slash and burn technique to clear for villages and agriculture before moving on when the soil fertility had fallen. The forest recovered and soil fertility increased due to the rotting of leaf litter.
Another piece of research, published at the same time has shown that hundreds of species once thought to have gone extinct have now been found alive and well. We were obviously looking in the wrong place.
Strange how, even today, mankind cannot rid himself of false belief and superstition. Time we moved on and realised that we are only a very small cog in the wheel of the universe and do not influence the future of events. Enjoy the ride while it lasts!
richard telford says: Comparing science with burning witches and human sacrifice?
Wrong.
Its a poignant analogy..
The author is comparing previous primitive reactions to changes in climate, to todays primitive(hysteria?) pseudo-scientific garbage (AGW)which is based on discredited models and politically driven hysteria.
Not sure how you missed that. 🙂
Have we really left the Dark Ages behind?
Well, err………no! We haven’t changed a bit, the technology has, but the mind set hasn’t & fear always controls others, that’s how people manipulate others, they use fear & in this case scare stories. The similarites of CAGW as a pseudo-relious belief system in beyond belief, forgive the pun. The vilification of all who challenge or even question the prevailing authority, & the selling of carbon credits, making people feel guilty about enjoying life, is incredibly similar to the old ways of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, who defied anyone to question their authority & knowledge under pain of death, priests roaming the countryside selling Papal Indulgences to the rich, & brow-beating the poor for their “sins”. I posted on a recent topic a pretend letter to John Holdren, about resorting to witchcraft tests that were the established science of the day, it’s a lose-lose situation because eother way the “accused is screwed”! We’re only one small step backwards into a “New Dark Age”!
On my website I show the annual and yearly trend in the anomaly maps each week. It isn’t really hard science, but it is useful to see how weather patterns repeat and continue. It also hopefully gives people a feel for how temperature anomalies build into “global warming.”
I know when I gathered all of the US anomaly maps it was interesting to see how the anomalies change in the different seasons. Summer have the least anomaly while winter consistently has very large anomalies. Just that is enough to show that the current warming trend is more seasonal that anything else. A trend in warming winters is exactly what the Earth’s climate should be doing right now.
http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/
“…I think yesterday we had an event at the Kronborg Castle, where one of my colleagues said that we need a new water religion; the management of water
resources has to develop like a new religion. And I believe this is precisely what we need in the forestry sector…”
–Rajendra Kumar Pachauri
Speech to Forest Day 3, December 13th, 2009
http://www.cifor.cgiar.org/publications/pdf_files/cop/cop15/Pachauri-speech.pdf
richard telford says:
September 30, 2010 at 2:09 am
Richard, one does not need to stick a bone in ones nose, pray to the Gods whilst slicing open a virgin to be “sacrificing”.
I’ll let Fiona Kobusingye explain it to you….(the full paper at the SPPI site)
“Life in Africa is often nasty, impoverished and short. AIDS kills 2.2 million Africans every year according to WHO (World Health Organization) reports. Lung infections cause 1.4 million deaths, malaria 1 million more, intestinal diseases 700,000. Diseases that could be prevented with simple vaccines kill an additional 600,000 annually, while war, malnutrition and life in filthy slums send countless more parents and children to early graves.
And yet, day after day, Africans are told the biggest threat we face is – global warming.”………
…….”However, the real problem isn’t questionable or fake science, hysterical claims and worthless computer models that predict global warming disasters. It’s that they’re being used to justify telling Africans that we shouldn’t build coal or natural gas electrical power plants. It’s the almost total absence of electricity keeping us from creating jobs and becoming modern societies. It’s that these policies KILL.
The average African life span is lower than it was in the United States and Europe 100 years ago. But Africans are being told we shouldn’t develop, or have electricity or cars because, now that those countries are rich beyond anything Africans can imagine, they’re worried about global warming.
Al Gore and UN climate boss Yvo de Boer tell us the world needs to go on an energy diet.
Well, I have news for them. Africans are already on an energy diet.We’re starving!”
So yes, these people ARE being sacrificed. Aided abetted and egged on by the likes of YOU.
Now you have a relaxed and comfy sleep tonight won’t you mate?
We entered a new dark age in science long ago, where-by those of a different view from the consensus have been pilloried and derided. This dark age applies to many scientific doctrines, not just climate. The advancements we have seen in technology owe little to main stream science and much to practical inventors and engineers. Spin charm and a big bang have no more relevance than AGW on reality. Witch craft in my country is big business and astrologers are making a good living. The gods on mount Olympus no doubt are looking down on us and laughing. Rather than sacrificing a virgin to save us all, our masters wish us to sacrifice our health and wealth to the new god carbon.
— coming out of a known Little Ice Age and we call it “Science”.—
This is not a scientific look at the actual reason for LIA or why it is different now. The increase in solar activity that ended the LIA has leveled several times, most recently in the 1950’s. Saying that we are “coming out” of LIA is not a skeptical look at the situation. It’s a nice tag line to repeat and make sense to those who don’t know the reality, but it is not science. At some point people should challenge this assertion; it’s easily debunked as nonsense.
Oh, and witches and human sacrifice? Do you really think that it is an intelligent way to condemn science? Have these front groups lost all subtly and now dropped all the pretense that they are legitimate sources of information?
Follow the money of this scam!
Governments need more income to justify there beaurocricy costs as they are running out of control. I’d love to see what a country, ANY country has to pay to have a government with the amount of red tape & political correctness they have these days. Every thing is strangled, put down or over taxed, or is it just me?
People who are skeptical about the truth of or evidence for the AGW hypothesis are not skeptical about science. They are not participating in some wholly imaginary “continued vilification of science and scientists.”
They just doubt the strength of the evidence for hypotheses that are being advanced by some particular scientists in one particular field of science. I don’t think they are skeptical about the application of scientific inquiry to the climate. They just doubt that the evidence for AGW is as strong as some scientists assert.
In the same way, those of us who were skeptical that the MMR vaccine caused autism were not skeptical of medical science, or doctors or science, nor were we a bunch of deniers. We just were not convinced by the evidence cited to show that there was the alleged connexion, and we have been proved right.
We are similarly finding that the alleged connexion between cholesterol and heart disease may not be quite what it has been asserted to be. Those of us who have always been uneasy about how forceful and how consistent the alleged evidence for this connexion may be are also not deniers or vilifiers of science. We just are not convinced by the evidence which is cited.
In another five years, it will be interesting to see whether people still think that CO2 is a driver of warming on the scale the AGW hypothesis asserts. I doubt it will be generally believed. But we will find out together, and in the meantime, we are skeptics, not deniers or vilifiers of science and scientists.
richard telford says:
September 30, 2010 at 2:09 am
Comparing science with burning witches and human sacrifice? This must mark a new high point in this site’s continued vilification of science and scientists. I know Watts didn’t write this vile slur, but by repeating it without comment, he shares some responsibility for it.
Whatever you want to believe, but the one thing I did notice was that you did not mention how this is wrong…
By just going on the attack, your credibility is skewed. How is it that the IPCC’s document is not the same as a crazed witch doctor telling his people to sacrifice the “poor people to the south” in order to get a better climate? Or are we supposed to assume somehow that the scientists involved in that document are better then the charletons in the Aztec’s times simply because they were educated at “modern” universities?
The more things change, the more things stay the same. No modernization for Africans, and what goes with energy comes back with yet more generations of poor living standards. Kudos to the IPCC for human sacrificing the un-developed nations in the name of the God named “climate science”. I wish we all would have learned our lessons before this started, but it appears some of you truly believe that by using human sacrifices today, we will have a better tomorrow weather wise (climate wise, or whatever you want to call your religion today..)
richard telford says:
September 30, 2010 at 2:09 am
Comparing science with burning witches and human sacrifice? This must mark a new high point in this site’s continued vilification of science and scientists. I know Watts didn’t write this vile slur, but by repeating it without comment, he shares some responsibility for it.
Think my first post got eaten, but if not thought it was important enough to repost in any regard:
The burden once again my alarmist friend is on you to prove this article is incorrect. Platitudes of “everyone knows this is wrong” are taken at face value along with assumptions that scientists really are better then witch doctors.
IPCC calls for not allowed third world countries to develop. Common sense tells us that without development, their lives are going to be brutal and cut-short at the same time. So this document supposedly written by scientists on how to control our weather, err I mean climate over the long-term calls for sacrificing generations of lives in Africa and elsewhere in order to appease the Gods of climate disruption or whatever the religion wants to call itself this week.
Can you tell me my logic is flawed? By refusing to allow power plants to be built in Africa you are responsible for cutting lives short, which is the same thing the Aztecs did in a rather brutal method by ripping the victim’s hearts out of their chests. Instead of doing this, you simply do it from a desk today by writing them off as “sub-people” and saying that if they die, it will help our planet. Kudos for having a method that keeps your hands clean, but whether you issue the order or simply tell others to do this, you are just as guilty and until proven wrong, I do believe I have an honest opinion of climate scientists…
Here are 10 of the worst weather events in relation to deaths. Most happened before 1988.
Worst natural disasters in history
http://library.thinkquest.org/C003603/english/worstdisasters.shtml
“So have there been more natural disasters in recent years? In a word, NO.
What we have, rather, is an increase in our ability to detect hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes.”
http://www.epicdisasters.com/
“Have disaster losses increased due to anthropogenic climate change?”
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010BAMS3092.1
richard telford says:
September 30, 2010 at 2:09 am
“Comparing science with burning witches and human sacrifice? This must mark a new high point in this site’s continued vilification of science and scientists.”
We get called “denialists”, a reference to holocaust deniers, even in the most prestigious science journals. Several expressions come to mind: tit for tat; when in Rome do as the Romans do; fight fire with fire; and payback’s a bitch.
Suck it up Telford and take your medicine like a man.
How can anyone believe that there were no extreme weather events prior to the industrial revolution? Has anyone heard of Noah and his Ark? The bible is full of natural disasters. Ancient peoples were obsessed about them and wrote about them. Back then they blamed them on God, the devil, sins of man, etc. Now we blame it on humans in the form of CO2.
The science today is corrupted so badly has to now become a tradition.
Educating tradition in schools as science.
The arrogance of mans small time on this planet to try and control and manipulate science for their own gains and outcomes due to controlling factors that has corrupted this area into the garbage it is today.
Rotation and motion has NEVER been included into science.
The basics of how our planet and solar systems mechanics is not in the past models where the models are setup in ideal lab conditions where no motion is felt.
So these models NEVER see the real motion that is generated.
A great deal of fiction is now our LAWS that we HAVE to follow no matter how they fall apart with new research shows they are incorrect.
gryposaurus says:
September 30, 2010 at 3:46 am
— coming out of a known Little Ice Age and we call it “Science”.—
This is not a scientific look at the actual reason for LIA or why it is different now.
Cherry picking part of a sentence, and attacking it as a straw man? Classy.
Here’s the entire sentence:
“We ignore thousands of years of climate evidence, in favour of an agenda based upon a century and a half of sometimes distorted and often-disputed temperature records, coming out of a known Little Ice Age and we call it “Science”.”
It has to do with the temperature records (which have been skewed, by the way), and in particular, the “hockey stick”, which not only conveniently erases the MWP, but then alarmingly and conveniently shows the ramp up of temperatures since when? Why, bust my buttons, since the LIA!
Oh, and please do tell us how and why “it is different now”.