Historian Matthias Dörries reveals the role of fear in our understanding of climate change
From apocalyptic forecasting to estimates of mass extinctions, climate change is a topic which is filled with fearful predictions for the future. In his latest research, published in WIREs Climate Change, historian Matthias Dörries examines the cultural significance of fear and how it became a central presence in current debates over climate change.
Climatic change, as represented by the media, often prompts headlines predicting disastrous events, frequently adopting fear laden language including analogies with war and warnings of the imminence or irreversibility of pending catastrophes. For Professor Matthias Dörries from the University of Strasbourg, a culture of fear is alive, and doing very well.
Professor Dörries looks at the issue of fear from a historical perspective, asking how our current society has come to conceive of climate change in terms of catastrophe and fear.
“Recently historians have underlined the necessity to revise the grand Enlightenment narrative of science as antidote to fear,” Dörries stresses, “We should now look at how popular and scientific discourses frame fear, and study the constructive and destructive functions of these fear discourses in societies.”
The 1960s and 1970s were characterized by an increasing appropriation of the future by science, leading to a rise of fear discourses by scientists themselves.
“For the very long run, science has indeed some terrifying prospects to offer for the planet Earth, and on a scale of decades, science has identified serious threats, such as anthropogenic climate change,” Dörries remarks.
“The current discourse of fear over climate change reflects the attempts to come to grips with the long-term issue of anthropogenic climate change,” concludes Dörries. “They are appeals for action, they imply claims to power, they stress that the issue is political and cultural, not merely a matter of science and reason alone.”
The problem with crying wolf all the time is that when the wolf finally turns up no one is really that bothered.
Governments have always needed the scare thing to unite or should that be control their populations.
After Hitler we had Reds under the Beds and as the Cold War ran down they figured that a Climate of Fear would do the same thing, only they were wrong.
Problem is most people are to scared to live, they live in fear that something might happen to them, so yes fear is probably the biggest fear of climate change.
As we do not create climate change why worry about something that is beyond our control.
I am reminded of the story of Professor Heinkel and the bumble bee, according to Prof Heinkel the laws of aerodynamics indicate that the bumble bee cannot fly, in blissful ignornance of this the bumble bee flies
The greatest threat is the push for national and global taxes to redistribute the wealth under the guise of combating AGW/biodiversity. That’s something everyone has reason to be afraid of.
The climate will probably continue doing what it does – I find that terrifying – not…
“The current discourse of fear over climate change reflects the attempts to come to grips with the long-term issue of anthropogenic climate change,” concludes Dörries. “They are appeals for action, they imply claims to power, they stress that the issue is political and cultural, not merely a matter of science and reason alone.”
Thank you, “Climate Science”/Post Normal Science, for [apparently] fooling people like Dorries by ignoring that little ‘matter of science and reason’ and going straight for the claim to power based solely upon fear-mongering and your own abjectly ignoble will to power.
I love it. I Googled “Historian Matthias Dörries” and the first hit is this article. Is Google noting the fact that I frequent WUWT or is the traffic so high articles come up at the top of their searchs within minutes?
Anyway, here is a link to the short paper. Apparently Wired is running it.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.79/pdf
There is no question that a great number of intelligent people have a suspension of reality when it comes to climate. I am continually amazed at the echo chamber, the cycle of reinforcement, that permeates the Warmists thinking. Here is a classic example:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2010/11/05/imaginary-temperatures-in-washington-go-viral/
A 3 degree temperature drop in Wash. DC is turned into a 3 degree rise. Was the falsification intentional ? Or merely an attempt to make data fit the preconceived fears of the Warmists? Who knows. But what is clear is that the false data will now become part of the AGW meme and the actual data buried from sight. And anyone who cites the real data will be considered a crackpot, or anti-science, or a Tea Partier, etc.
Another EPA bully left under fear of confrontation (hearings in the House)
Lisa Heinzerling, the head of EPA’s policy office, will return to her position as a Georgetown University law professor at the end of the year, said EPA spokesman Brendan Gilfillan.
Lisa Heinzerling, an advocate for aggressive regulatory expansion to combat global warming, has resigned:
She is no longer able to play the fear card and push their agenda.
We are living in interesting times, but wait!…do not exaggerate, you are the hosts of the UN and its Holy IPCC, why don’t you rally against it as JH (aka:”trains” ) rally against you all? while planning to take all non-believers to re-educational camps in his “trains”.
Is he planning a new version of kilns perhaps?, this time microwave kilns? 🙂
For him this is a serious matter, for us they and their theories are nothing but a joke, but beware, the dangerous thing is that they keep on with their agenda.
Is there so much in it or it is just the obsessions of a bunch of lunatics?
I think we need the help of a psychiatrist to analyze the facts.
It is not clear from this exerpt whether the author thinks that the political and cultural impacts of CAGW fears serve a constructive or deconstructive function in society. Dorries seems to be summarising, not drawing personal conclusions.
Personally, I can think of only two constructive functions of perpetuating CAGW fears. The first would be to make some people extremely wealthy. The other would be to help a few individuals ascend into power positions in government.
It has always been alive and well and has been around for donkeys’ years. We used to burn witches over failed rains. :o)
100 years of warming and cooling fears
http://www.businessandmedia.org/specialreports/2006/fireandice/fireandice.asp
150 of global warming and cooling fears
http://newsbusters.org/node/11640
1895-2008 warming and cooling fears
http://www.almanac.com/sites/new.almanac.com/files/1895_cvr1_0.png
60 years of warming and cooling ice age fears
http://www.climate4you.com/ClimateAndHistory%201950-1999.htm#1950:%20Significance%20of%20the%20Arctic%20climatic%20change%20in%20Greenland
Well it looks like Dörries has swallowed the bait and is pursuing the green. You would have thought an historian would be well aware of the dangers of cargo cult climate science.
“They are appeals for action, they imply claims to power, they stress that the issue is political and cultural, not merely a matter of science and reason alone.”
Without good science to support CAGW, the best response id do nothing. Temperatures oscillate up and down quasi-cyclically over time and if it turns cold instead of warming we will be wasting trillions for a lost cause.
Saw an article in the paper today, teh UN is pushing for global taxes to fight AGW. They would have all teh money they need if they removed 30% of the usless family members on staff there
Fear was the great motivator underlying 20th century politics. It’s now, (thankfully), impossible for almost all of us to imagine what it was like for Europeans, (especially), and Americans to live through the three decades of 1914-1945. And from 1945 onwards there was the Cold War and the threat of nuclear destruction. It was this constant fear that largely drove the desire for, or at least acceptance of, big government in developed societies.
Now no one under 70 can remember World War II; no one under 25 can even remember the Cold War. Fear has greatly abated. Government can, and should, retreat from people’s lives. Historians of the future may see AGW as a last attempt to re-kindle fear by people who didn’t understand how to govern in its absence.
Catastrophism as a movement and scientific mindset was very big in Victorian England, eventually it petered out discredited and disbelieved only to lie dormant like a virus for three or four generations before rising again in our own times. The hysteria that fuels the madness burns out eventually; sanity finally prevails and the human race returns to the business of living for today.
One example of how incredible Climate Change/Global Warming allegations can be:
Everyday I hear at a local radio an ad saying that “Because of Climate Change all sources of water will disappear”, everybody gets scared in spite of the fact that the world is 71% covered with water and, if salted it can be turned into drinkable water by just passing it through a low cost reverse osmosis equipment.
Of course these ads are paid by a known bank, which is a branch of a well known NY investment Bank, showing that there is big money behind Climate Change. If that wouldn’t be the case it should have ended long time ago. So, it does not matter how intelligent or how many skeptics’ arguments may be, there is an obvious expectancy of big gains, but which are these?, selling silly windmills? , solar cells?.. No, I don’t think so, there is much more involved. Does somebody have a precise idea?…or it is plainly the control of the whole world by a very small elite?
Everything in our culture is based on fear… Edward Bernays and the modern Admen have only rediscovered and refined the ages old psychological lynchpin of religious manipulation – FEAR
Now virtually every product (from soap, to politician, to beliefs) is packaged and sold emotionally and idealogically, the memes developed by trillions in research at giant tax-exempt foundations and corporate think tanks.
Ha ha. This reminds me of a couple of weeks after Y2K never materialized, we watched a video (I was in school at that time) saying that the earth tends to start over every million years and (they claim) scientists say that it will probably happen again around 2050.
I remember sitting there thinking “Really? You can’t even wait a month before declaring another apocalypse?”
” …not merely a matter of science and reason alone.”
Boy…they hit that proverbial nail right on the head, eh? Nothing like redefining the issue, just so they can contrive some kind of foundation for their agenda.
Next we’ll be hearing from the EPA the same thing they said about ETS: it doesn’t matter what the science says, or does not say, the “consesus” of the American people believe is it’s unhealthy!
“That wheel in the sky keeps on turning…” I don’t know where we’ll be tomorrow…
Enneagram says:
November 5, 2010 at 10:19 am
“Does somebody have a precise idea?…or it is plainly the control of the whole world by a very small elite?”
It is plainly the control of the whole world by a very small elite.
Too bad to see a historian of Climate Alarmism go over to the dark side (AGW). I would love to see a documentary, or a great series, with gorgeous photography that gives the history of Earth’s amazing life-altering (whether extinctions or expansions or diversity radiations) changes. The more humans understand the tremendous changes of plate tectonics (earthquakes-earth motion), mountain building, volcanoes, large igneous province flows, floods, droughts, asteroid/comet impacts (many more than we imagined before), glaciations-intrastadials, effects of change in the oceans on land, solar cycles, and many, many more, the more we (I definitely include myself) might to be able to take this Climate Fearmongering in stride and examine the evidence.
Change is the natural order and organization of life. Adjustability is one of life’s most precious “possessions”. Terror prevents developing adjustability in favor one final solution — and the one today seems to be a kind of total marxist control (totalitarian) by a global bureaucracy. I hope real scientists will work just as hard as have Climate Alarmists to educate us humans about Inevitable Natural Climate Change. Indonesians are experiencing the “Disruption” aspect of it these days. Inbetween the disruptive times, there is awesome natural beauty and the opportunity to live as prosperous a life as possible. People need to know.
Thanks to Henry chance (9:00 am) for the good news that one marxist in the U.,S. administration has bit the dust. Lisa Heinzerling, aggressive head of EPA’s policy office has resigned, returning to the Law School at Georgetown University. Now you get an idea as to why so many lawyers are falling for the marxist line — too many stupid (uninformed-religiously marxist) law professors.
On the other hand, fear is not an effective selling strategy as insurance companies discovered long ago. People tend to turn off as they have been tuning out to the whole global warming scare.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
H. L. Mencken
I have always thought that the line “We have nothing to fear but fear itself” was nonsense. Fear is a rational reaction to perceived threats which trigger fight or flight responses. We should be very wary of our perceptions of course and be fearful of those who either exaggerate dangers or falsely minimize them.
nemesis says: “The whole aim of practical politics …”
is to persuade a bunch of gullible people that voting for a political elite once in a blue moon who then stuff us the rest of the time is the best form of government we can ever hope to achieve.
You Americans have a big problem; just like the Lame Street Media has misled the public on AGW they have misled you on Globalization and Corporatization. YOU do not live in a democracy. Anyone outside America looking at you sees Capitalist Extremism run amok, do you have any idea of how the rest of the world sees you. I see allot of people here that are very good with very complex math, how many of you have added up the numbers on your obscene debt and its consequences.
If you think I am being overly harsh listen to one of your own Liberals (Chris Hedges of the New York Times) lament the failure of the American Liberal Class and their complicity in your creation of a “Corporate State” !
Here Chris Hedges of the New York Times speaks on American Liberalism
http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2010/11/nov-0210—pt-3-american-liberalism.html
Click on the podcast link at this page.
There are two ways to lead a population, one is to inspire and lead by example using stirring words,deeds and appealing to the higher aspects of human nature like honour, courage, self sacrifice, honesty and patriotism. Of course to use this route the cause has to be just and genuine and honourable and honest with the highest of aims and led by people endowed with the highest principles.
The other way is darker and meaner and cynical, it appeals to the base and dark instincts of human nature. Fear and uncertainty and jealousy and hatred have long been prime mass motivators of humanity, make someone frightened enough and guilty enough and angry enough and they will do almost anything and follow almost anyone way beyond civilised behavioral norms. Those who use this method usually have a dark and dishonest set of aims which have to be hidden. Those using this method can also believe that any action however repugnant and morally corrupt is justifiable because the ends justify the means which in itself is merely a self justification for doing evil. This method thrives on lies and deceptions and cannot in fact exist without them, it drives the entire method and eventually kills the entire enterprise because eventually everything becomes infected with lies and deceptions and nothing is true. This I believe is the difference between good and evil, one path leads to heaven and one to hell. The one that leads to hell is solidly paved with lies,deceptions and good intentions from the start, once the first lie is told and the first deception enacted to sustain the narrative the cause is lost. More lies and more more deceptions can prolong the method and narrative for a time but it is an ever decreasing circle of diminishing returns for ever greater outlays of lies and deceptions.
If history has taught us one thing only it is to never go down the road to hell, yet still forces are at work to take us that way again, will we ever learn?
I have always felt and argued that climate alarmism is more dangerous to humanity’s present and future prospects than anything the climate can conceivably throw at us. Even if you stipulate to a greater than 2C rise in GMT by the end of the century the present global carbon demonization model fails on any rational consideration of the economic fundamentals of cost- benefit ratio and opportunity costs. Even at our present early stage in the plan, though it does seem to have been going on forever already, we have a litany of epic fails that demonstrate this exactly.
The humanitarian and natural disaster sparked by the biofuels bubble. The diversion of limited global capital, in a world facing facing an inexorable demand for increasing amounts of cheap and abundant energy, into massive investments in wind and solar projects that have almost no prospect of providing meaningfully for present demand let alone the needs of the future, while concurrently depriving R&D and deployment capital from systems that have at least the possibility of solving future needs. The demands for completely ignorant carbon sequestration schemes which, even in the highly unlikely chance that they will work, will consume supposedly scarce fossil fuel resources 50% faster and provide climate benefits so small we wouldn’t be able to detect them. The push to convert the vehicle market to electrics, which promises to be another disastrous bubble when the small segment of population who are willing to sacrifice money and functionality for a psychological green feel good moment becomes saturated.
The now Trillions of dollars spent and many more Trillions demanded in the future, which have been and will be diverted into this dead end anti Carbon scheme are, by creating and fostering massive economic inefficiencies, damaging the present and robbing the future.
Climate fear results in large part from the abject failure of government education, in which “studies” have replaced large swathes of the hard sciences [Mrs Smokey was a teacher, and a Principal for the past twenty years. She retired last June].
Students are being cheated, there is no other way to describe it. From middle school through college, the minimum curriculum [IMHO] should at least include:
• Civics and the U.S. Constitution
• Calculus, Physics, Chem, and Biology, including some Biochem & Organic chemistry
• Western Civilization; Hammurabi through Plato, to Nietzsche and Popper
• Western Literature, The Book of the Dead, Gilgamesh through Homer and Hesiod, to Twain and Melville
• Music History
• Art History
• English Lit
• English, with emphasis on reading, writing, grammar, spelling, and punctuation
• Economics, micro & macro
• Intro to Geology
• Intro to Philosophy
• American History
• European History, plus a Shakespeare course
• One classical language [mine was Latin], plus one modern language [French, German, Spanish, Russian, Asian & East Indian are good choices]
• A basic Business course, with Accounting and Business Law
• Intro to Statistics
What do they get instead? Numerous “studies” courses, watered down arithmetic, politicized science, primarily 20th Century history. [Civics? What’s that??]
No student should be promoted to the next higher grade without passing a proficiency exam. Letter grades and the grading curve must be used in every school [including the once great Harvard, which now uses easy Pass/Fail grading].
Rigorous thinking is no longer taught in public schools. Textbooks are selected based on politics. Students are promoted to the next grade, and kids graduate with high school diplomas who literally cannot read or write. Mrs Smokey was told that she had no choice in the matter, and would be replaced if students in her school were not graduated. Teachers routinely game the NCLB tests.
With a government school system that no longer teaches rigorous thinking, is it any wonder that the fear of “climate change” can be instilled so easily in a population that gets its primary education from propaganda films like An Inconvenient Truth, and the 10-10 video implying that dissent deserves the death penalty?
Well the climate has changed for the good since the last ice age but that can’t be used to tax, regulate, dictate, suppress and grow government power. I guess they knew that.
It ought to be the hysterical climatologists we should fear since they are the ones who tries to persuade people to do something that cost money to do with no benefit in sight, or the climatologist just want more of the peoples money so they can get yet another umptenth chance to prove that what they try to persuade people to do by spending money on nothing is the right thing to do. And what not.
But of course in more rational reasoning these hobnobs are not to be feared, just like climate change is not to be feared since climate always change. Laugh at the hobnobs, or just annoy the hell out of em for good sport and a spite, and adapt, as per usual, to any change climate or otherwise.
Cassandra King, Nov 5, 11:43am:
You are ‘spot on’, Sweet Pea! Your cogent distillation mirrors my own sentiments and philosophies, yet far more precisely and elegantly stated than I have ever managed. May I quote you and use your homily in its entirety?
Encore! Encore!!!
Science and fear – Opposite sides of the same coin
Science – looking at a storm and wondering how it works
Fear – hearing the thunder and running for cover
Facing your demons is the only way to overcome fears, so how has our society come tho this – by the application of equality that all people are created equal and devolving that to rule of the lowest common denominator that makes them equal. Take your pick
White
Black
Native
Jew
Christian
Moslem
Communist
Capitalist
Climate Change Alarmist
Climate Change Denier
Don’t care
When in reality no person equals any other person, everyone is an individual entity with unique characteristics, needs and desires. And, the characteristics, needs and desires of every societal group, from a family to a city to a country, are a function of the individuals and the environment that those individuals, live grow and die in.
I agree with Smokey (at 12:18 pm) children are not being taught the principles that brought modern man out of the stone age, and instead are taught stories about how things used to be, or how some idealist would like them to be.
The world to a newborn is a wonderful place until they are trained to fear it, and only the lucky ones will overcome their fears and use their innate investigative and problem solving skill to maintain and improve their life.
From:
http://www.thebodysoulconnection.com/EducationCenter/fight.html
The “fight or flight response” is our body’s primitive, automatic, inborn response that prepares the body to “fight” or “flee” from perceived attack, harm or threat to our survival.
============
Mess with it, at your own peril.
In addition to fear itself, we now have fear-mongers who exaggerate every natural disaster into epic Apoplectic proportions, for the express purpose of Power & Money.
They now have to fear the opposite sine exposing them for what they really are.
What warms up must cool down.
u.k.(us) says:
November 5, 2010 at 2:12 pm
The “fight or flight response”
Using fear as a marketing tool has the advantage of creating a response that shuts down rational, critical thinking.
I understand cultural level fear, both presently and historically, is essentially caused by a culture viewing nature as malevolently active. Such cultures expect bad things from existence itself . . . . . constant fear results.
Likewise, a culture that views nature as benevolently active has positive engagement with nature and lacks fundamental /pervading fear of it. Nature is a positive aspect and since man is naturally part of nature, man is benevolent as well.
Science has been the source of the benevolent view. Science still is.
The source of the malevolent view is supernaturalism, demonology and superstition.
Science hasn’t changed per se. Climate science has been infected with non-scientific views designed to give a malevolent view of man for himself as man.
John
John Whitman says:
November 5, 2010 at 4:50 pm
I agree John, wholeheartedly. The sad thing is so many are unwilling to question what they’re told, whether through the MSM or at school. It’s a shame too.
I can’t recall who the comedian was but I recall the “punchline”: “If America was discovered by the current generation they wouldn’t have made it past Boston”. Referring to the attitude of fear, victimization, entitlement, etc. It would seem we’ve come a long way, unfortunatley in the wrong direction. By my compass since the early 1900’s (1910 to 1913).
Well done. Lots of thought-provoking comments on this post. Thanks everyone (so far)!
toryaardvark says:
November 5, 2010 at 8:11 am
The problem with crying wolf all the time is that when the wolf finally turns up no one is really that bothered.
Governments have always needed the scare thing to unite or should that be control their populations.
After Hitler we had Reds under the Beds and as the Cold War ran down they figured that a Climate of Fear would do the same thing, only they were wrong.
Problem is most people are to scared to live, they live in fear that something might happen to them, so yes fear is probably the biggest fear of climate change.
As we do not create climate change why worry about something that is beyond our control.
I am reminded of the story of Professor Heinkel and the bumble bee, according to Prof Heinkel the laws of aerodynamics indicate that the bumble bee cannot fly, in blissful ignornance of this the bumble bee flies
Well, as I keep posting:
—————
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
~ H. L. Mencken ~
—————
And there you have it.
@ Enneagram: November 5, 2010 at 10:19 am
The precise idea behind this is:
“THOU SHALT BE HUMBLE AND MODEST”
There is a surprisingly large number of people who support this message, though they do not necessary live by it.
But in our modern times you cannot just shout
“THOU SHALT BE HUMBLE AND MODEST”
and hope that lots of people will be impressed. You need data to support it!
I’ve been personally promised for 4 decades now that petroleum will run out in 10 to 15 years max. What happens is that crude oil production and consumption rises and after 10 to 15 years people are deeply worried to discover that we only have 10 to 15 years of petroleum left. These data obviously doesn’t do the trick.
So if you can’t muffle the supply you have to muffle the exhaust. The pollutants produce by burning fossil fuels can all be avoided or somehow filtered, leaving only water and CO2.
Declaring water a pollutant was too though which left CO2, which is a tough one too. But then they remembered Arrhenius and dreamed up CAGW:
“We are messing with our climate! Nothing less than Armageddon!”
So they founded the IPCC to support the idea:
“THOU SHALT BE HUMBLE AND MODEST”
with data and it doesn’t matter if the data are wrong since the message:
“THOU SHALT BE HUMBLE AND MODEST”
is genuine, just and true and data are only needed to support it. This is why the “errors” of the IPCC are no concern since they point in the right direction.
I don’t think fear is a big driver here. People would act differently if they were really scared. No, it is this warm feeling you get when you save the earth. Doing the right thing is a strong motive. There are all kinds of rituals (unplugging your standbys, ride bicycle (if the weather is not too inconvenient), recycle etc..) you can do to show your dedication.
Sure some will get filthy rich and powerful in this process but the mass of supporters are just doing their rituals to save the earth.
Jimbo says:
November 5, 2010 at 9:42 am
{For Professor Matthias Dörries from the University of Strasbourg, a culture of fear is alive, and doing very well.}
“It has always been alive and well and has been around for donkeys’ years. We used to burn witches over failed rains. :o)”
And the fate of the IPCC/Hadcru coven ?
I know many people who have stopped believing in AGW, but are still convinced that “the weather is doing weird things” in more recent times. Weather, it would seem, is about the easiest matter to spook folk on.
Dear Mac the knife,
You may use my humble post as you see fit, I am very pleased you find some truth in it and I am very glad it may be seen by a larger number of people.
The post is now yours to modify and improve as you think best.
Yours
Cassie K.
Cities, counties and states that have skeptical folks running the show (that would not be, I assume, about elected folks that follow the careers of people like the pothead who just got elected in California), need to take back their thermometers. In terms of giving the data away to so called slimate scientists, just shut’er down till we get some ‘splainin from GISS and a proper independent analysis from an independent gold star panel of statisticians. Every conservative city, county and state needs to take the show back from Hansen and his ilk till they coughs’up what they have done to the data, and why their version is different from the raw data. I believe an entire country has done that. The Netherlands? So why have the numerous conservative states not taken up the call to “meet at noon on main street”? Are conservative governmental leaders chicken? We now have control of the House. So man up Republicans. Do the bidding of the people who gave you back your House.
These scientists – never trust em. Some science blast from the past ( Alf Wegener or whatever) came up with this bizarre idea that all the continents had been joined together and then moved apart.
What a wag. He went to his grave with people thinking he was a nutter…….
Rocket Science says:
November 5, 2010 at 7:49 pm
‘Jimbo says:
November 5, 2010 at 9:42 am
“It has always been alive and well and has been around for donkeys’ years. We used to burn witches over failed rains. :o)”
And the fate of the IPCC/Hadcru coven ?’
Respectfully, Rocket, you have it about face. The IPCC and their scientific Dominicans are the Inquisitors and we dissenters the ‘witches’. After all, it’s not us threatening them with burning (or red buttons).
Adam gloated
—————–
Ha ha. This reminds me of a couple of weeks after Y2K never materialized.
—————–
Since Adam was in school he probably did not learn about the very large effort that was expended to fix the Y2K problem, so that it did not become a catastrophe.
I think I have noticed this kind of weird logic before;
1. Someone says there is a problem
2. Someone devises a fix for problem
3. Problem gets fixed
4. Problem does not appear
5. Attention seeker announces that this is evidence that there was no problem
Lazy teenager claimed:
“1. Someone says there is a problem
2. Someone devises a fix for problem
3. Problem gets fixed
4. Problem does not appear
5. Attention seeker announces that this is evidence that there was no problem”
Someone claimed there was a problem, some people exploited the perceived problem, the MSM jumped in because it sells copy, some people made lots of money inventing fixes to the supposed problem which did not fix the problem because there was no problem to fix in the first place.
The problem did not in fact exist at all, fear and uncertainty exploited by self interest and peddled to a trusting population, sound familiar?
RichieP says
————
dissenters the ‘witches’. After all, it’s not us threatening them with burning
———–
As far as I am aware warmists are for taking action to avoid burning, naysayers are intent on avoiding action at all costs which strategy may lead to burning.
I think you need to think this out more clearly.
Cassandra King says:
————–
Someone claimed there was a problem, some people exploited the perceived problem, the MSM jumped in because it sells copy, some people made lots of money inventing fixes to the supposed problem which did not fix the problem because there was no problem to fix in the first place.
————–
And you were there as an insider in hundreds of IT companies and IT departments of major/minor corporations?
Or did you employ you hyper intelligence to divine this from first principles by inspecting the tangles of your belly button fluff?
LazyTeenager, Cassandra King et al
Interesting article on Y2K postmortem:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9142555/Y2K_The_good_the_bad_and_the_crazy?taxonomyId=14&pageNumber=1
Parts of the following quote from the comments section of this article looks eerily familiar:
I lived through the Y2K mess too, and it can be summed up this way:
The Good:
– IT received much deserved attention.
– Outdated systems were replaced or updated.
– IT budgets grew, and spending may have even boosted the economy.
The Bad:
– Y2K was mostly media hype spread by people who didn’t understand IT.
– Hype grew into a marketing tool for IT vendors and providers.
– Lots of meddling from non-IT managers.
– Unnecessary spending on staff and projects for pet projects with Y2K as an excuse.
– IT spending practically stopped in 2000 since all the upgrades and spending were in 1999.
The Ugly:
– After nothing happened on New Years Day, nobody took IT recommendations or warnings seriously anymore.