Alarming trends

The most trusted BBC TV Newsreader Anchorman of 20 years confirms out and out BBC News Coverage bias towards global warming religion.
http://www.savethebritishfilmindustry.com/2011/01/as-20-year-tv-news-anchorman-peter-sissons-confirms-marxist-bbc-bias-against-britain-why-does-the-bbc-subsidise-the-guardian-to-the-tune-of-100-a-year-per-genuine-guardian-purchaser/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1349506/Left-wing-bias-Its-written-BBCs-DNA-says-Peter-Sissons.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

I wonder who wrote about nuclear war around 1808.

I love it!
Talk about “Conservation of worry”, try sticking in [climate change,nuclear war,communism,fascism,second coming]. Intersesting.

Was it Kipling who wrote a story forecasting nuclear weapons in the late 18th century? I remember reading it in an SF Anthology too many years ago.
OT. autonomous Mind is carrying a story that the BBS has refused an FOI request on the number of complaints about Climate Change on the grounds that climate change is, “Journalism, Art or Literature.” – but we already knew that, didn’t we?

Now if we could just find a way to turn all this “Doomsday is Upon Us” paranoia into energy we’d be able to solve the energy crisi and the CO2 emmissions/AGW problem in one go!

Common sense in decline!
Other word trends that mirror climate change are autism and pizza. If only I were as good as Briffa and Mann, I could prove causation by the mere fact that I can’t think of anything else plausible.

@Stuart-Brown: Very good article on BBC. If there are any real historians or journalists remaining, they would do well to look into 1988-89 when the Soviet power gave up on Russia and moved to Britain and US. It was dramatically obvious in BBC World Service, and equally obvious in the workings of EPA and in the switch from President Reagan to Rezident Bush Senior.

[We intend to tighten up the show around here. Taunting will not get you far. Continue and you end up in spam filter permanently. ~ ctm]

If you are in the business of writing, the future looks pretty good for those who choose “climate change” for their subject. The readers will still have to sort fact from fiction. The future isn’t as bright for those who choose “global warming”. Readers have discovered too much fiction when they are seeking facts. I predict “climate disruption” will have a short run because the fiction is so easy to recognize.

Well, Charles, I think my question much less of a taunt than people calling a scientist I respect a ‘evil old git’. But, perhaps your standard differ.

steveta_uk says:
January 22, 2011 at 5:49 am
You want alarming?
OT I know…sorry…
After having my recent bout with Prostate Cancer at 54 and all these male baby boomers, that graph is going to go through the roof.
Thanks for the OT space.

Try adding “terrorism” too for another far more popular scare. “Rapture” was an interesting one too. Interest seems to have dropped since 1800 only to resurge this century.

Now add ‘2012’ and ‘Y2K’. Hmmm. Is it me or do we have some weird, deep seated need to find something to crap ourselves about every few years?

latitude,
The sad thing is they missed all the action happening in the oceans looking for temperatures.

You should add “climate hoax” and “climate fraud”

I tried to find out where the hysteria is headed, so i compared with biodiversity. No takers yet. Recession? No, it’s dropping since 2008. Terror? Bingo.
http://www.google.com/trends?q=global+warming%2C+climate+change%2C+biodiversity%2Crecession%2C+terror&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

Angry Exile says:
January 22, 2011 at 7:11 am
“Now add ’2012′ and ‘Y2K’. Hmmm. Is it me or do we have some weird, deep seated need to find something to crap ourselves about every few years?”
Most definitely. Normal human instinct is to look out for dangers. That’s also why dystopian science fiction sells. Or take your usual Hollywood blockbuster. And it’s not that weird; it’s a necessary part of our nature to prepare ourselves for the next problem. It’s only that some people go and pick non-problems like saving Gaia when they should better think about their career or their savings or other real problems in their own lives…
I have this idea that even the Malthusians fulfill a useful role in Julian Simon’s idea of the way we deal with limited resources. Simon says that we use three ways of dealing with limited resources: Finding new resources, increasing our efficiency, and substituting the dwindling resource with an alternative solution.
So, the substitution process usually picks up steam once the price of the resource becomes too high. The Malthusians and warmists want to accelerate that process for coal and oil and gas; which is not economically necessary at the moment, but might become necessary some time in the future. So, as long as they put their own money where their mouth is, investing, for instance, in renewable technology before they are economically viable, i’m all for it. Somebody must be first. Needless to say, most of the early investors will lose their money.

Grumpy Old Man says:
“Was it Kipling who wrote a story forecasting nuclear weapons in the late 18th century?”
No. Rudyard Kipling lived from 1865 – 1936.

izen says:
What is the source of the small blip around 1900 ?
How about, Google has crap metadata, and a few books are erroneously dated a hundred years earlier than their actual date?
I found an interesting blog post by a librarian on this, discussing the resulting popularity of the internet in 1905, but I’m damned if I can find it again.

There is a startling tactical resemblance between the ‘nuclear winter ‘ campaign , which more emphasized PR than science ,and present efforts to discount climate science for political ends. One wonders if sites such as this will last any linger than that defunct proto-blog , ‘Nuclear Winter News’ .
It is of course embarassing to see Tony and his cohort following in Carl Sagan’s footsteps , but the scientifically clueless continue to outnumber prophets of doom who fail to deliver.

Peter H.
Just because you call someone a scientist, doesn’t make him one. Actions are what make scientists. Based on that your nominee doesn’t make the first cut. Measurements, care with errors and error bounds, re-measuring, improving measuring methods, cross checking measurements with laboratory references, re-measuring again, acknowledging mistakes, correcting them, publishing the detailed methodology, publishing the raw data, responding to criticism, changing methodology to respond to critiques of the current, demonstrating equivalence, these are the hallmarks of a scientist. Nowhere does it say that a press release is equivalent to a thoroughly vetted, critically reviewed publication.
Read the piece below on Metrology, there’s a lot to be learned there. None of it will involve hidden, convoluted computer programs.

Nuclear weapons.
Another topic where predictions and solutions touted by the usual suspects were way off the mark.
Move along,nothing to see here.There is a new game in town.
Environmentalism.

Global Warming Panic explained

@noaaprogrammer
What about the Y10k ? No problem, I’ll fix the problem. I helped fixing the Y2k bug, so I have experience. Come back before year 10000 and I’ll show you how I fix that problem. Don’t forget, year 10000 is not so near…in any case call me a few months before, in case I forgot. 🙂

Laurie Bowen:
We are indeed paying attention; “they” need not worry. I’m with Dan.
John the Schoolteacher

RE: CO2 vs. CO vs. HCN
I wonder if the integral of the curves would be representative of an LD50.
Another old fear to put in: antichrist.
BTW: I wonder if this will make it through RC moderation in their annual Hansen 1988 prediction “review”:
John W says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
22 Jan 2011 at 2:08 PM
“So to conclude, global warming continues. Did you really think it wouldn’t?”
No, I figured it would. I study history, which tells me we have another 400 years or so of Global Warming to go with the occasional two or three decades of slight cooling here and there.
What I find disturbing is that if Congress had instituted the draconian emission restrictions being recommended in ’88 then these observations through 2010 could be used now to pat ourselves (as in the USA/UN/whoever imposed draconian CO2 restrictions) on the back for avoiding “certain” warming.
The other thing that bothers me is that if one of the lines of evidence for the current warming having man’s fingerprint is that the models without man’s influence do not coincide with reality that is warmer. This being the inverse should imply man’s influence is negligible since the closest match to reality is with draconian emission restrictions that didn’t happen.

“Economic Growth” vs “Climate Change” would suggest a collision between the two is inevitable
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=economic+growth%2Cclimate+change&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3

Something interesting. If you simply put in the word “climate”, it shows a downward trend.

The generally accepted phrase for which Anthony has called worry is “moral panic”.
People have listed a few, although you left out the satanic cult panic of twenty years ago. I would add alien abductions (though doubtless some members here believe in them). Smut on telly and in films. Subliminal advertising had a brief kick too. Every era has them, they’re not even remotely new.
Be aware though that moral panics are not necessarily based totally on nothing. There is currently a panic about paedophiles. People will drive their kids to school in order for them to be safe, but without seatbelts – thereby dramatically increasing their actual danger. Kids will be left with a family member to avoid being unsupervised – which doesn’t actually reduce the risk. The danger of paedophilia has reached panic precautions, so that it is inflated out of all realistic bounds. But underneath there is a real risk, albeit much lower than lots of other things people don’t worry about.
Likewise, there is clearly evidence of a huge moral panic over global warming. The dangers are ridiculously inflated and “solutions” are given that would be worse than the cure. However, that is not proof that there is no cause for concern. Many panics are based on nothing (satanic cults, subliminal advertising) and others on real problems but raised out of proportion (paedophilia, smut on TV).
The Wikipedia page on moral panic is rather skimpy, but you will see that a key concept is “consensus” among believers. Tee-hee.

AGW popularity will have it’s day then fade way like other pseudo religious cults. Some time ago on WUWT a poster wrote the following. The comment resonated with me and id like to share it again. I didn’t retain the handle of the poster but h/t to you.
————————————————–
“Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. En-vironmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it’s a re-ligion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.
There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a re-sult of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment.”
AGW theory has become part and parcel of this growing Pantheist ideology.

luca turin says:
January 22, 2011 at 10:44 am
’twas I who sent the graph to Andrew, and I have long been a believer in the notion that total anxiety is a conserved quantity. Ngrams is a source of endless fun

———-
luca turin,
Thanks.
Would you think that ‘worry’ is a scaled phenomena that is dependent on the world population? Likewise, I would think that the number of books written is scaled to world population.
John

Concerning the yellow line:
Sunstein, Cass, and Timur Kuran. “Availability Cascades and Risk Regulation.” Research. Social Science Research Network, October 7, 2007. http://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/files/364.pdf

What struck me in the timing of the graph is that the downtrend in the nuclear war worry and the uptrend of the global warming panic happened right about the time that Soviet communism fell. I’ve heard it said that environmental extremism is the new communism…

and if you ever thought it was about energy, not politics, see:
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=global+warming%2Cclimate+change%2Csolar+energy%2Cwind+energy%2Cneuclear&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3
where solar and wind energy have a blip around 1980 and drop of real fast!

Try running NGRAM with the word “anxiety”. It dwarfs the other words tested, but seems to have been relatively flat for the last 50 years — evidence in support of the conservation hypothesis.

Strong correlation between bullshit and global warming. Hmm, anyone want to conjecture a causal relationship? Which direction? I don’t detect an 800 year lag, though…

Guido Botteri says:
January 22, 2011 at 8:22 am
Too many books on climate change? Good heating fuel.

Slight OT, but as another person who helped fix the Y2K problem, I think the level of ignorance in the general public should be addressed by someone.
The Y2K problem was real, and a very large number of programmers made sure it was fixed in plenty of time, as evidenced by the complete lack of serious issues when the event occurred.
But there were other unreported consequences that had serious impacts on some lives. Many software companies exist from update income – they produce a product with reasonable new sales, but nowhere near enough to new sales to support the company, but survive thanks to the need to supply regular updates and enhancements that provide a regular influx of cash. Individual customers may upgrade only every 3 to 5 years, but there is a steady flow of upgrade sales.
But 1998 and 1999, almost the entire customer base of these software suppliers upgraded their software. These were boom years, and were misunderstood at the time. Companies, including the one I worked for at the time, were cash rich, stocks rose, staff levels grew, everything was rosy.
But early in the year 2000 the reason became obvious. Nobody was upgrading, so there was no cash flow. Even new customers dried up, as anyone considering replacing systems did so the year before, to avoid the need to upgrade legacy systems. Within six months, many of the companies, including the one I worked for, collapsed.
So I get a bit annoyed when the ignorant public say things like “remember Y2K? That was a fuss over nothing” – because it took a lot of work by many programmers to ensure that is was a “fuss over nothing”.