Guest post by Steve Goreham
Climatism, the belief that man-made greenhouse gases are destroying Earth’s climate, is a remarkably flexible ideology. Calling it “global warming” for many years, advocates then renamed the crisis “climate change” after the unexpected cooling of global surface temperatures from 2002-2009. Last month, John Holdren, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, urged everyone to start using the term “global climate disruption.” What’s next — “catastrophic climate calamity”?
Decreasing snowfall was once claimed as an indication of man-made climate change. After years of declining snowfall in England, Dr. David Viner, senior scientist at the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia, predicted that winter snowfall would become “a very rare and exciting event.” Others predicted that snow cover in the United Kingdom would disappear by 2020. But last winter, at the same time that much of the eastern U.S. received record snowfalls, the U.K. was entirely blanketed by snow, as shown in the following NASA satellite photograph — a rare occurrence.
The heavy snow in England was very embarrassing for the U.K. Meteorological Office, which had predicted a mild winter.
So what have the alarmists done? Attend almost any lecture today by an advocate of man-made global warming and you’ll find that “heavy snowfall” is now included on the list of impacts from climate change. Now both heavy snow and lack of snow are evidence of man-made warming.
To anyone who studies geologic history, the 1.3oF rise in global surface temperatures over the last century is unremarkable. Yet the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations calls this rise “unprecedented” and labels it evidence of man-made climate change. This recent temperature rise is well within the +/-2.5oF range of Earth’s average surface temperature over the last ten thousand years. It’s a remarkably small change, given the titanic forces exerted on our world by the sun, the planets, and Earth’s own terrestrial forces of weather and ocean cycles. Even though the average surface temperature of Earth has stayed in a narrow range, local temperatures vary widely. In Chicago, for example, the average annual range is from about -5oF to +95oF. Such wide local variation means that a “hundred-year weather event” is occurring somewhere on our planet at any given time.
Climatism uses these local weather variations, and increasingly the term “climate volatility,” to raise alarm. A recent example is the August report from the World Bank warning that “climate volatility” is expected to “worsen poverty vulnerability in developing countries.” This year, we’ve had drought in Russia and record floods in Pakistan. Both occurrences were seized upon by climate alarmists as evidence of increasing man-made climate volatility. Record cold temperatures in July in Bolivia, which killed millions of fish in South American rivers, were ignored. Natural local weather events, selectively amplified, provide an endless source of fodder for promoting the coercive governmental policies of Climatism.
Yet, scientific evidence shows that weather would be less extreme in a warmer world. Peer-reviewed studies on droughts, floods, hurricanes and storms show that 20th Century occurrences have been of equal or lesser severity than similar events in past centuries, when Earth’s climate was in the cooler period of the Little Ice Age. The bulk of science shows that today’s climate is not more volatile as alarmists claim.
The latest initiative from the climate change chameleon is to frame global warming as detrimental to the health of U.S. citizens. On September 28, a joint letter from 120 of America’s health organizations was delivered to President Obama, supporting efforts by the Environmental Regulatory Agency to regulate greenhouse gases. The letter claims that man-made global warming is now a U.S. public health issue especially for “older adults.” Yet senior citizens continue to retire to Florida, Texas, and Arizona rather than North Dakota and Minnesota. Don’t they know that warmer temperatures are a serious health risk?
Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of Climatism! Science, Common Sense, and the 21st Century’s Hottest Topic.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
This post need serious formatting.
Wall of text syndrome mate.
However, that picture of the UK is stunning. I was knee deep in that snow at the time, was an…. interesting winter and i’d put good money on it being the same/worse this year- which of course will be global warmings, sorry change, sorry disruptions fault.
Just heard it on UK Radio 2 news that snow in winter is due to global warming
I was in Tehran at the time that picture was taken, but returned home to the heavy falls in December and January. Interestingly the weather in Tehran was exceptionally mild, though it did snow several times. The big fear there was drought, but I haven’t seen anyone comment on that all through the summer. The whole shift was, of course, caused by the NAO shifting westward, which meant we have had an exceptionally wet summer here in Germany after a six week period of hot weather – immediately seized on by the warmistas as “proof” of warming.
What the Climatist Faithful cannot admit is that their new “religion” is pure shamanism. No science, no facts, lots of spin and a horde of desperately under employed youff who have been taught enough to think they understand something far to complex to be explained as simplistically as the politicians would like. Add to that that most people no longer think or enquire when they are told something and you have a method of population control by fear …
Who was it said “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing?”
From the IPCC
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg2/pdf/wg2TARchap13.pdf
“In Scotland, the skiing industry is likely to experience more
f r equent snow-deficient winters, with adverse impacts on the
financial viability of the industry.”
13.2.4.4. Tourism
Great picture of the UK under snow, luck i was on a beach in Thailand for the 3 weeks of snow.
And the main problem i have is who will be held accountable for the AGW shame to the world, as its now goen political i’m guess one lamb to the slaughter, then back to ripping billions of dollars from the poorest in the world.
When the picture of the UK was taken last winter we were sitting under an area of high pressure for several days = no wind = very little power generated by the wind turbines ………………… ho hum.
PS We have just had the first snow of this winter in the north of Scotland.
2 UK Independent stories on winters 10 years apart
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/plunging-temperatures-herald-arrival-of-winter-2112735.html
10 years is a long time, is it weather or climate.
‘Last month, John Holdren, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, urged everyone to start using the term “global climate disruption.” What’s next — “catastrophic climate calamity”?’
Well ask a straight question of these climatists and naturally you’ll get another typical silly answer. Welcome to your new “heroes of the moment”-
http://www.ipbes.net/3rd-meeting-on-ipbes.html
The more these people get disrupted the more they stay the same with a new name.
When the Ancients perceived that their leader was not a God who had special predictive powers, they lost thier faith and thier leader lost his head. In that leadership vacuum, thier enemies prevailed.
Best not to let Big Heads who claim to have special predictive powers get control of your society.
The consequences when they fail are the real disasters.
err…make that a new alias.
Live image
http://www.cairngormmountain.com/webcam/ptarmiganCamLarge.html
Summer 2010
Another great posting… thank you.
The Gray Monk says:
October 22, 2010 at 3:43 am
What the Climatist Faithful cannot admit is that their new “religion” is pure shamanism….. and you have a method of population control by fear.
Who was it said “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing?”
Leaders need fear, especially an external fear, to cow the masses… just like generals need troops to do their dirty work… and when fear is not enough then they rule by force (the law) to enforce their will… just like the conscription and the denial laws… so watch this space for cap-and-trade, surcharges, taxes, subsidies and prohibitions (DING! A light bulb, literally, just lit up in my mind’s eye)
Experiencing first-hand what it was like ‘on the ground’ when that photo of Ice-Britain was taken, I can tell you – it was not much fun, especially for the elderly.
Also, let’s not forget that this experience was made worse than it should have been because the Met Office, using their global warming/climate change/climate disruption/whatever next computer models had predicted a mild winter. Therefore, the Local Councils, who are responsible for clearing the roads, had not sufficient stock of road salt …
And before you ask, why didn’t we clear roads and pavements ourselves: the then Labour Government, gone mad on Health&Safety, told us repeatedly that if we did so, anybody who then fell on those roads cleared by us would be liable to pay for ensuing claims … so we didn’t …
Unprecedented madness ensues when politicians and ‘climate’ scientists get into bed with each other.
Clear message, no questions.
Perfectly logical in our Orwellian world:
We all know “weather is not climate” (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/noaa-n/climate/climate_weather.html), but now we also know that “all weather IS climate change.”
Goes rather well alongside the new maxim given us from NYT’s John Broder: “faith is science and science is faith” (http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2010/10/21/broder-down-the-rabbit-hole/).
And the UK has already had its first snow fall of the winter. Oh it’s still autumn!
If you cherry pick weather events you can prove anything in the way of climate changing, catastrophe whatever you want.
Governments want to control what we do, where we go. It is their ultimate ego trip and fosters the new communist state.
Long Live Freedom!
It is worse than we thought …
(Sorry, just wanted to be the first to say it.)
Here in Ottawa, Canada (which is 500 miles SOUTH of London, England) the temperature varies between -30C to +30C every 6 months.
Biodiversity is just another attempt to exploit people’s fears and lack of knowledge
Biodiversity: Replaces Climate Change As The Weapon For Political Control
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/29005
Very good post! As in keynesian economics, their theory never fails: If keynesian “stimulus” blattantly fails in Japan in the 1990s then, according to keynesian Paul Krugman (2008 Nobel Prize in Economics and NYT columnist) what happened is that more “stimulus” was needed, their pseudo science can never fail!.
They allege that the “housing bubble” should have brought the USA to a Great Depression but thanks to Obama “stimulus” the USA was saved from another Great Depression, but they overlook the fact that in Japan in the early 1990s they had a huge Real Estate Bubble -of the same magnitude of the recent USA bubble- plus a Stock Market Bubble that the USA never had in this crisis, and things got really bad for Japan only in the second part of the 1990s when they started their massive government spending “stimulus” that left Japan drowned in debt. They conveniently ignore the raises in taxes in late 1980s and early 1990s and they conveniently ignore that it was until they lowered capital gains taxes in 2003 that Japan had some “recovery”. As in climate “science”, they ignore most of those INCONVENIENT TRUTHS that show their theory is pseudoscience!
In climatism their pseudoscience theory can never be proven wrong, everything that happens proves their theory true: Snow or the exact opposite -lack of snow- “proves” that their pseudoscience theory is true. Hot or Cold, Rain or Drought, cloudiness or lack of it, ice or lack of it, ANYTHING that happens proves their theory true!
In economics it is much worse since clearly politicians and bureaucrats, pursuing their insatiable lust for more opressive power over people and more $trillions in tax and spend, caused almost every major crisis and severely damaged the industrial world growth with high taxes and government spending: They trigger the crisis with “tight” money which is a massive process of intervention in prices in which they take away huge amounts of money, bringing short term interest rates to crazy high levels -look how in 1928 the ultra short term interest rate -the Discount rate- was higher than the 30 year (very long term) AAA bond interest rate and how in 2007 the fed fuds rate -ultra short term interest rate- was higher than the 30 year AAA bond rate; once the crisis is triggered, they turn it into a GREAT DEPRESSION with massive taxes, government spending and regulations to “solve” the crisis, i.e., they turn the crisis into a depression with MORE massive oppressive power, control, taxing and spending by politicians and bureaucrats.
Just read John Maynard Keynes “General Theory” and you will barely see a statistic! Keynes theory an incredibly big building of falsehood based on false, totally implausible assertions that are not proved at all. Keynes demonizes savings and divinizes spending but you could equally demonize spending and divinize savings with EXACTLY the same argumets that Keynes uses by giving to investment the magical properties that Keynes gives to consumption, those magical properties are given without any proof, just because Keynes said so.
Keynes makes assertions equivalent to this: There is a “definite ratio” between my income and what I spend on burgers, since I spend 2% of my income in burgers THEN if I multiply my spending in burgers by 1000 my income will too be multiplied by 1000 since such a 2% “definite ratio exists!!! Based on similar nonsense they come up with a government spending “multiplier” that can even be near infinity!!
Of course divinizing consumption and demonizing savings is the dream of many bureaucrats and politicians since an orgy of spending and enormous control and power and empoverishment of people is “justified” by such pseudoscience: If spending is divinized then an orgy of tax and spend by the public sector “saves” the private sector from their “errors”!! ; by demonizing savings they can take away, through social security taxes, peoples savings for old age and make them poor and dependent on politicians and bureucrtas by establishing pay-as-you-go social security schemes where taxes on the young pay for the sustainment of old people; old people cannot sustain themselves because taxes impeded them to build a capital to sustain themselves in old age.
They have even absurd “keynesian” Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figures that show tax hell Norway has a TWICE the GDP per head of the USA and 90 times (!!) The GDP per head of Vietnam! Anyone that takes a virtual tour with google earth will see that it is pure nonsense alleging that Norway has twice the USA production per person or 90 (!!) times Vietnam production per person. Even Ultra tax hell Sweden has a highest production per head than the USA according to their absurd GDP figures! Just look in google earth how many people in Stockholm Sweden live in old ugly apartment buildings from the 1960s and 1970s or in ugly houses built with cheap materials!
But the truth is showing up: Ultra poor Singapore in the 1960s, for instance, rejected the “advice” by the Nobel Prize in economics geniuses, mainstream media & academia and today the 1960s ultra poor Singapore is clearly much richer than tax hell Sweden; Sweden in the 1960s, before it was a tax hell, was one of the RICHEST places on earth! Now you can see through google earth that Singapore is richer than Sweden and has lots of nice new buildings! (and the GDP figures adjusted for purchasing power, the figures that make some sense, show a much higher production per head in Singapore than in Sweden) And besides, in tax hells they are running out of youths to tax to sustain the old! Their social security scheme is unsustainable! Look what is happening in France or Greece!
I could go for years talking about this but this is already too much. I am not surprised that Jeffrey Sachs, one of those keynesians alleging for false theories and more destructive insane opressive power to United Nations, made one of the “slimiest” attacks on WattsUpWithThat (WUWT): They know WUWT has been DEMOLISHING mainstream academia & media pseudoscience, WUWT is a HUGE threat for pseudoscience, WUWT should , as savings, BE DEMONIZED!!!
In climate science you actually have many people that has scientific rigor, macroeconomics was perverted by politics to such deep levels that they have little people with scientific rigor. As I have said several times, WUWT and skeptics victory over IPCC pseudoscience will be TOTAL, because the lack of warming will be UNDENIABLE and noticed by EVERYBODY. I doubt that keynsianism, the equivalent of co2 alarmism in macroeconomics, will suffer such a powerful defeat.
That is why I tell again to Mr Watts and all you, KEEP ON FIGHTING! KEEP ON FIGHTING!! Your victory probably will be TOTAL!! You will show the modern world, as has never been shown before in modern times, how politics corrupt science!
KEEP ON FIGHTING! YOU ARE MAKING HISTORY! Your future TOTAL victory will help in bringing lots of other victories against pseudoscience! “Rarely so few people did so much good” as Churchill once said. Keep the fight, it is so moving to see your honest truthful fight against pseudoscience and against enslavement of people by politicians and bureaucrats
You may say I am some crazy nut that always posts similar stuff but what you do is too damn important for mankind wellness, nothing is more important than reducing the power of politicians and bureaucrats, when they had TOTAL power they killed more than 200 million people and stole the means of production to hundreds millions ! (under COMMUNISM and national SOCIALISM, search the net for R.J. Rummel and see for yourselves)
This is no issue. Just call it (e.g. the globally by far warmest decennium in all records was 2001-2010) what it is: anthropogenic global warming.
“Yet senior citizens continue to retire to Florida, Texas, and Arizona rather than North Dakota and Minnesota. Don’t they know that warmer temperatures are a serious health risk?”
I be one of those, except that I am not yet a “senior citizen” and have not yet retired. I came to Florida 20 years ago from New England to escape cold weather. As I sit looking out my open slider door onto the green grass and colorful tropical foliage with a clear blue sky background, I continue to pray to the gods of global warming that Florida will get even warmer in the winter.
A great article, thanks for the link.
Viv Evans – that’s exactly what I was going to say – both local and national government in the UK were so committed to this idea of global warming and consequent mild winters that we ended up with a totally disastrous situation. Fortunately, this year local government are stockpiling more salt and grit regardless, so it may be a little better. (Though not in the south east of course, which will be paralysed the instant the first snowflake touches the BBC’s roof in London.)
Let’s use the term “Climatautologist” for someone whose claims cover the entire range of possible outcomes.
It’s like Dwight Eisenhower saying “Things are more like they are today than they have ever been.”
It was in AR4 as well………….. (ie 2007 vs tar 2001)
“12.5.9 Tourism and recreation A variety of adaptation measures are available to the tourism industry (WTO, 2003, Hanson et al., 2006). Regarding winter tourism, compensating for reduced snowfall by artificial snowmaking is already common practice for coping with year-to-year snow pack variability. However, this adaptation strategy is likely to be economic only in the short term, or in the case of very high elevation resorts in mountain regions, and may be ecologically undesirable. New leisure industries, such as grass-skiing or hiking could compensate for any income decrease experienced by the ski industry due to snow deterioration (Fukushima et al., 2002). Regarding coastal tourism, the protection of resorts from sea-level rise may be feasible by constructing barriers or by moving tourism infrastructure further back from the coast (Pinnegar et al., 2006). In the Mediterranean region, the likely reduction of tourism during the hotter summer months may be compensated for by promoting changes in the temporal pattern of seaside tourism, for example by encouraging visitors during the cooler months (Amelung and Viner, 2006). The increasing, new climate-related risks to health, availability of water, energy demand and infrastructure are likely to be dealt with through efficient co-operation with local governments. Another adaptive measure for European tourism, in general, is promoting new forms of tourism such as eco-tourism or cultural tourism and placing greater emphasis on man-made rather than natural attractions, which are less sensitive to weather conditions (Hanson et al., 2006). It is also likely that people will adapt autonomously and reactively by changing their recreation and travel behaviour in response to the new climatic conditions (Sievanen et al., 2005). ”
Do they not think people will not notice, and say oh well, extrat snow is global warming, as is less snow?