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.
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AdderW says:
October 22, 2010 at 8:32 am
Sorry, but the English letter imitation of the Cyrillic Russian initialism СССР (kyrillian) is SSSR and the “translated” equivalent would be USSR, so that “joke” falls on it’s face.
Thanks for exposing another good reason not to go along with the marxist climate ideology/religion………the soviets were in power for 70 years…..and couldn’t spell their name properly the whole time.
Think of the cost of changing the letters on all those rockets, and hockey uniforms……and no capital to finance the correction.
LOL
David Jones is correct – 1947 was a bad winter in the UK, but 1941 was also a bad one, with heavy snow, food rationing, a shortage of coal for our open fires and a bit of unpleasantness going on across the Channel. We soon learned that an air-raid shelter in the back garden can be a chilly place at three in the morning.
But it all turned out fine in the end, as the actress said to the bishop.
In panhandling, in climatism, in global warming, in IPCCistics, and in the circus, there’s an very old saying that is as true today as ever it was, and no doubt will be true to the end of time: “There’s a sucker born every minute!”
Phillip says:
October 22, 2010 at 6:45 am
“The readers of this blog have the choice of accepting reality and joining the work on finding and implementing solutions to AGW . . . or of keeping their minds tightly closed and staying in the fringe in this cyber circle jerk. The choice is yours.”
Phillip, the problem is that, even if one were willing to stipulate to the worst case scenarios of those whose work you seem to find so convincing, none of the presently offered, make that demanded, “solutions” have any prospect of solving the problem.
Given that there seems to be a growing body of evidence that even their best case scenarios may be overstated, and more particularly, that almost every one of the proposed future catastrophes that are meant to make us think that this nonsense demands “solutions”, has been shown to be mostly BS (bad science), a truly enquiring mind might be moved to ask “Why is all this happening?” Obviously you wouldn’t seem to fall in that category, but if you feel that is an unfair characterization of you and your cohorts, I suggest an experiment to test the proposition.
1) Open a fresh email account
2) Get yourself a different moniker
3) Pretend for the moment that you are one of us ignorant knuckle draggers and compose a comment similar in tone to the one you posted here, but directed at the folks you agree with.
4) Go to each of the sites posted on Anthony’s sidebar under Pro AGW Views and any other similar ones you may visit regularly and attempt to post that comment.
5) Report back here with your results.
And just to show that we are mostly friendly and helpful folks around here I’ll offer you some friendly and hopefully helpful personal advice. If you should ever find yourself in New York City and a stranger should approach you with an offer to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge, turn and run away as fast as you can, because you obviously haven’t got what it takes to resist the pitch.
Response to:
John DeFayette says:
October 22, 2010 at 4:35 am
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.”
This is Hilarious! Reminds me of the Family Circle cartoon years and years ago showing Dad trudging through two feet of snow with his three foot tall son, explaining that when he was his son’s age, the snow came up to his chest (as it now does to his son). That’s the starting point for NASA’s discussion – and they missed the humor of their statement?
Oh, well. I guess it’s better than revising historical temperatures so that current temperatures look high.
I don’t get it. How come the photographer couldn’t focus on the whole animal?
Hey, that’s like the professional climatologist of the IPCC religion who’s not able to focus on the whole picture of all the weather that makes up all the observable and measured weather (but can only focus on the simplified accumulated made up fantastically fantasy statistically weather that nobody’ve ever, IRL, observed nor measured and never ever will be able too.
If you still donät get it the Chameleon is out of focus.
The progression of alarmist nomeclature is from the general to the specific, that is, away from the global to the regional. The natural end result should be extremely specific. I suggest the endgame that will allow everything and anything to be a symptom, and stop all skeptical argument flat, will be TABW, or Today’s Anthropogenic Bad Weather.
1DandyTroll says:
October 22, 2010 at 12:41 pm
“If you still don’t get it the Chameleon is out of focus.”
Ah yes, Weedhopper, but can you answer this question? What color is a Chameleon on a plate glass mirror?
@ur momisugly Phillip says:
October 22, 2010 at 6:45 am
And speaking of reality, the reality is that the global climate is warming, mankind is responsible for much of the warming, and the consequences will be serious. The readers of this blog have the choice of accepting reality and joining the work on finding and implementing solutions to AGW . . . or of keeping their minds tightly closed and staying in the fringe in this cyber circle jerk. The choice is yours.
—-
Thanks for calling everyone on this post a Moonbat, Phil! Very professional of you. I’d love to read your CV.
I’ve worked in the field for 30 years (biomethane mitigation), so I know the arguments well. My opinion of climatology is presently colored by the Climategate emails and subsequent revelations, and I quite agree with Dr. Hal Lewis’s sentiments in his resignation letter from APS:
“Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.”
The benefits of updating our fossil fuel economy are many, and climatologists should drop the scary bedtime stories about drowning polar bears & practice some sound environmental science for a change. I consider most of them charlatans & not real scientists.
Hal Lewis’s letter is here: http://www.thegwpf.org/ipcc-news/1670-hal-lewis-my-resignation-from-the-american-physical-society.html
R. de Haan says:
October 22, 2010 at 5:00 am
Biodiversity is just another attempt to exploit people’s fears and lack of knowledge
Biodiversity: Replaces Climate Change As The Weapon For Political Control
===========
Actually, it’s even worse than that. The new, improved scare (courtesy of the UNEP, dedicated to the creation and promulgation of increasingly scary stories since 1972, and proud parent of the IPCC) is “unprecedented loss of biodiversity seriously compounded by global warming”.
You’ll be pleased to know that – thanks to this new, improved scare – we may no longer need to worry about our “carbon footprint” as this appears to have been subsumed under the new, improved “ecological footprint“.
The new kid on the UNEP’s scaremongering block is the IPBES. This is not a “panel”, though, it’s a “platform”: IPBES = Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. It’s mandate is to produce (wait for it!) “gold standard scientific reports for governments”.
This august body, which began life as a mere “concept note” a few years ago, came into full-bloom on June 11 of this year. Not only will IPBES “mirror” the IPCC, it comes with TEEB – a 2 years in the making “new testament” for the (IPCC’s) Climate Bible, ready for consumption by the gullible.
TEEB=The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity. They call it a “study” (“inspired” by the Stern Report) – and it comes with its very own “tipping points” and imperative to “put nature on the balance sheet”, and (surprise, surprise!) mechanisms such as “biodiversity offsets or other schemes to mitigate and/or compensate …”
The mantra of TEEB’s Team leader, (on generous loan from Deutsche Bank) Pavan Sukhdev, is “What you do not measure, you cannot manage”.
Further details available at:
Move over IPCC … here comes IPBES
and
Biodiversity loss … TEEB on the march
A side note: … As the Telegraph’s James Delingpole has astutely* observed: “Suddenly it becomes clear why they kept Pachauri on at the IPCC. Because the IPCC simply doesn’t matter any more.”
*Full disclosure: I am the “Hilary Ostrov” to whose blog Delingpole refers his readers in his article:-)
Sorry mods: “observed” in above is missing closing [“] in URL … s/b:
observed
Pascvaks says:
October 22, 2010 at 12:21 pm
In panhandling, in climatism, in global warming, in IPCCistics, and in the circus, there’s an very old saying that is as true today as ever it was, and no doubt will be true to the end of time: “There’s a sucker born every minute!”
****
How true. But with the declining birthrates in the West, I would think that our suckerness would also be on the decline. Must be the CO2.
mrjohn says:
October 22, 2010 at 9:13 am
“….So I guess the jury is still out. The swans from Siberia arrived in SW England early this year which is supposed to mean a cold winter. My criteria are “one hot summer does not a climate change make, nor one cold winter”
I agree that in the case of natural variation, ‘one hot summer, or one cold winter does not a climate change make.’ However, as far as the AGW theory goes, increase in CO2 emissions must always push the temperture up (the effect of increasing greenhouse gases is not that temperatures flat line or fall but rather than they must increase). Accordingly, cold events need to be fully explained because they are counter intuitive to the theory.
As far as the UK is concerned 2008/9 was a cold winter. 2009/10 an even colder winter. If 2010/11 turns out to be cold, we will have had 3 cold winters in a row. This runs counter to the AGW theory and requires a full and proper explanation other than natural variation since if that is the only explanation then there is nothing to say that natural variation doesn’t account for the warming between 1970s and late 1990s.
The way things are shaping up it looks likely that the winter will be cold (but hopefully not as bad as last year).
mrjohn says:
October 22, 2010 at 9:13 am
If you read to the bottom of that article Dr Viner says
“Heavy snow will return occasionally, says Dr Viner, but when it does we will be unprepared. “We’re really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time,” he said.”
So I guess the jury is still out. The swans from Siberia arrived in SW England early this year which is supposed to mean a cold winter. My criteria are “one hot summer does not a climate change make, nor one cold winter”
———————————————————————————
I was discussing this exact same quote on another thread.
My response was –
Well – it’s so rare … that we’ve had snow every single year since that forecast in 2000 .
You see this is the difference between what the CRU scientists tell us will happen “within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event. Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” (THEORY) and what actually does happen (REALITY)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/4/new…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/1232047.stm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nottingham/features/2002/12/white_chris…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/1864973.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/2711291.stm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/mid/sites/slideshows/pages/2004_s…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4468830.stm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/southwest/sites/inpictures/pages/…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/suffolk/content/articles/2007/02/08/wha…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7167475.stm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ouch/2009/02/snow_snow_and_more_s…
….or the difference between the ‘MODELS’ and the actual ‘OBSERVATIONS’ !!!
And I came across a terrific quote in the first link –
“Scientists have identified a general trend of climate change, although there is disagreement over what exactly is causing it. ” !!!!!!!!
Sorry – repeat but with working links this time!!!
mrjohn says:
October 22, 2010 at 9:13 am
If you read to the bottom of that article Dr Viner says
“Heavy snow will return occasionally, says Dr Viner, but when it does we will be unprepared. “We’re really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time,” he said.”
So I guess the jury is still out. The swans from Siberia arrived in SW England early this year which is supposed to mean a cold winter. My criteria are “one hot summer does not a climate change make, nor one cold winter”
———————————————————————————
I was discussing this exact same quote on another thread.
My response was –
Well – it’s so rare … that we’ve had snow every single year since that forecast in 2000 .
You see this is the difference between what the CRU scientists tell us will happen “within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event. Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” (THEORY) and what actually does happen (REALITY)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/4/newsid_4380000/4380415.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/1232047.stm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nottingham/features/2002/12/white_christmas_odds.shtml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/1864973.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/2711291.stm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/mid/sites/slideshows/pages/2004_snow_scenes.shtml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4468830.stm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/southwest/sites/inpictures/pages/snow_march06.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/suffolk/content/articles/2007/02/08/whats_off_snow_feb_07_feature.shtml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7167475.stm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ouch/2009/02/snow_snow_and_more_snow.html
….or the difference between the ‘MODELS’ and the actual ‘OBSERVATIONS’ !!!
And I came across a terrific quote in the first link –
“Scientists have identified a general trend of climate change, although there is disagreement over what exactly is causing it. ” !!!!!!!!
Nobody has bothered to mentioned this, so I’ll point out the simple fact that
whether true or not is not a “logical fallacy”. (Cf. the earlier part of Phillip’s comment.)
Come on! I can’t handle these overweening critics of WUWT that come on like the ill-fated swordsman in that Indiana Jones film. Surely you can do better than thiat!
Global Warming
Climate Change
Anthropogenic Global Warming
Global Climate Disruption.
What’s next — “Catastrophic Climate Calamity”?
Global Warming Srikes Back
The Return of Global Warming
The Revenge of Global Warming
Son of Global Warming
Global Warming Rides Again
The Attack of Global Warming
Global Warming Episode IV
Global Warming Episode V
Global Warming Episode VI
Global Warming goes to Hollywood (sorry AL Gore has done that)
@ur momisugly Phillip says:
October 22, 2010 at 6:45 am
Phil, have you re-written that paper on UHI in China yet?
As opposed to staying in the mainstream in some other circle jerk (A.K.A. pro-AGW dogmatic circle-jerks)?
And, speaking of accepting reality, are we supposed to accept the reality-by-imaginary-consensus, or the reality of the world as we see it with our own eyes?
There are many reading this blog, like myself, who are not as yet, totally, utterly convinced of the 100% accuracy of every small detail of the AGW theory.
Have I made myself plain?
I do hope so.
Now for a serious warning.
Just because AGW is nonesense, does not immediately PROVE the opposite.
We may or may not be headed for another ice age just yet.
The climate is of that group of systems best described by chaotic maths.
We have gone through an extended period of warming and drying.
We may well be moving into the opposite part of the cycle for an extended period.
Reading sunspot data and the history on the little ice age and so forth is very interesting.
I spend a lot of time doing just that;
and following the work of serious solar physics rearchers too.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves nor fall into an “anti-AGW cult” trap.
It may take more years of waiting than you probably have time for on this earth,
to be able to distinguish between normal fluctiations (was hot – so now cold)
and a shift from one cycle (1850-20??) to a new one, which could really be much colder and wetter than we would welcome.
So far we are just seeing the normal rebalancing that occurs after a rather long run in a given direction.
Climate is part of a subgroup of chaos theory that has a strong recursion to the mean.
Hey there, my namesake, thank you for provoking me into doing something I’ve never done in months of reading this blog and that’s posting on it, so I can be included as a ‘moonbat’. Gosh, I’m so proud. Me, a moonbat at 53! I must tell my dad, he’ll be proud too!
Great post btw, Aussie Dan, you exhibit a level headedness & depth of scientific understanding that the foaming mouthed warmists must envy.
Excellent Information. And please continue redistributing this info everywhere (pardon the pun!).
Keynesian Economics (which we used to call Credit Card Economics) is nothing more than a pseudo-intellectual attempt to put the stamp of legitimacy to the profundly corrupt and immoral concepts of Marxism, Socialism and lately Globalism.
It is a criminal act that (in the USA permutation) is nothing more than legislative theft of private property redistributed to ungrateful leeches.
I was all set to launch into a tirade over these equivalencies, particularly Gore/Inhofe (these are opposites, Gore is a coward because it takes no courage to jump on a consensus bandwagon, Inhofe is courageous because it took great courage to stand up to the AGW Insanity in the years PRIOR to Climategate), and MSNBC/FOX (for every Fox there is ACTUALLY 3 to 5 MSNBC’s, so please check your math 😉
But then I saw what I hereby nominate to be Post of the Week …
Thanks go to Justa Joe! You sir, are sharp as a tack.
I for one really appreciate comments like this one. Too many of my fellow natural-born Americans are pathetic spoiled brats whose idea of hardship is when they get less bars on their cellphone reception.
Having become great friends with many communist refugees I have learned just how much we take for granted and how laughable the things we complain about really are. AGW Cultism is only one of the latest examples of our petty narcissism (also see Ribbons around our arms convince others we care about some disease, Hands Across America, Marches for this and that, … ad nauseum).
Many years back, watching the look on the face of a newly arrived Cambodian or Vietnamese or Cuban when they FIRST saw the inside of a fully stocked supermarket was like a hammer to the head. When these people finally feel safe and comfortable enough to speak as your Romanian friend, I listen very closely. And I want all my fellow spoiled brat countrymen to listen as well:
This is exactly correct, if not understated, and I have heard this over and over. The message must get through to our children (instead of the AGW propaganda crap shoveled into their minds day in and day out). Socialism and all its mutations must be stopped while we still have the choice, or we will lose this place.
James Barker says:
October 22, 2010 at 2:48 pm
…”But with the declining birthrates in the West, I would think that our suckerness would also be on the decline. Must be the CO2.”
________________
Must be! Funny how CO2 can do so much to so many for so little; and it fast too.