A “visual broadside”, so to speak, in a short but sensible and entertaining video. This is based on Roy Spencer’s work and it is a must watch. I highly recommend sharing this video on every blog and website you can.
A debunking of the left’s global warming agenda, from Roy W. Spencer, former NASA climatologist and climate expert. For more on this topic, purchase his new Broadside, “The Bad Science and Bad Policy of Obama’s Global Warming Agenda” by clicking here: http://amzn.to/jYWzEH.
h/t to Jo Nova down under. Speaking of Australia, John Cook of Skeptical Science works out as a cartoonist (and blogs “faux skepticism” in his spare time) , but he’d never be able to produce anything like this.
Thanks, Anthony.
That was great…..
WOW! Share this with your school-age children and grandchildren.
Wow! Great presentation. All of the issue in a comprehensive nut-shell.
GPlant
Now THAT deserves an Oscar!!!
Sorry to post here but your Tips and Notes page is running very slow. Wanted to leave a link re the sanctimonious hypocrisy over at UnReal Climate where our Gav is attacking Soon.
“In my opinion, this kind of ‘scientific’ sleight-of-hand is far more egregious than Soon’s ability to get funding from coal, oil, and fossil-fueled foundations.”
Unbelievable
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/07/how-soon-is-now/#more-8146
Great post thank you.
Was that Josh on the cartoons? Whoever it was it was great! Well argued too.
BTW I know it’s not really the right place but the other day when I talked about Prof Mike the yo-yo here is the link to his thoughts of ’09!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8008473.stm
It’s not that IF the climate is robust and stable, it is that Even if AGW and Even if CAGW all turns out to be true, the global governance, transformation to an undefined “green economy” and $76 trillion recently demanded by the unelected and non-representative UN can still only be for nothing anyway.
So where is the reference to left wing politics? No-one outside the USA sees people like Barack Obama or Al Gore as remotely left wing with their traditional American values ( Economics, Capital punishment and military interventions) so what is all this “climate change action equals left wing politics” tosh? This, as I have said many times bedevils our debate and distracts from our arguments which are based on science not politics. This sort of thing just gives warmists and catastrophists the ammunition to say “ see , that proves it, they are just a bunch of right wing Americans who do this for political ends” We know this is not true, please please do not make our job any harder than it is. There are many European socialists like myself who have serious concerns with climate science, but we do not put the blame on right wing politics or rampant capitalism. Keep politics out of the debate!
Gareth Phillips,
“There are many European socialists like myself who have serious concerns with climate science,”
As a socialist (European or otherwise), I would guess that one of your concerns is over policies that are transferring the wealth of the poor into the pockets of the rich. I’m still waiting for Ed Milliband to speak out, though.
The video no longer plays either on the WUWT site or on YouTube – just a blank screen.
Sabotage?
REPLY: No, sheesh, it works fine. PEBKAC or system config. Try updating your flash or browser – Anthony
But Gareth, if we leave politics out of the Global (fill in blank with favorite phrase du jour), there wouldn’t be much of a debate and certainly wouldn’t be trillions of dollars on the line.
Global Warming is not Left’s agenda. Leftwing/rightwing dichotomy is false and a distraction.
Global Warming is mostly Big Bureaucracy and Big Money agenda.
I agree wholeheartedly with Gareth Phillips, and would like to make a plea that you leave politics out of the debate. This is not an issue of left-wing versus right-wing any more than it is in the debate about whether the earth is flat or spherical. It is a simple matter of scientific research and coming up with the right answers.
I consider myself to be “liberal” in many ways, and my wife scoffs at my AGW skepticism, primarily because it means “keeping company with the loony right-wingers”. I think I’ve managed to convince her that it has nothing to do with left or right, but unfortunately with these comments you are just fanning those flames.
Rick
BTW, that video link is just a black square that does nothing, and I’ve tried viewing in with both IE and Firefox.
Video seems to have disappeared. Won’t work for me at Jo Nova or Y-tube either.
REPLY: PEBKAC or your machine configuration, it’s there. – Anthony
“Good news children, science has learned that man-made production of CO2 warms our planet.
This means vast areas of tundra will become arable land or forests.
Since CO2 is plant food, more CO2 will increase the production of every farm on Earth, Lumber will be cheap. The more fosslil fuels we can find and use will contimue to increase the output of farms and forrests, we are facing runaway prosperity.
Prosperity will rise, famine will end and there will no longer be a “Third World”;
Their lives will be vastly improved through the prosperity of a warm Earth.”
It’s the doomsday narrative that warmists use that shows their bias and exposes agendas not related to saving the Earth. “Hurry up and go solar or we’re all dead” says the CEO of “SOLAR INC”.
Also interesting, is the correlation between political ideology and belief in AGW.
Am i mistaken in my personal observation that believers in AGW tend to fall left of center politically, while skeptics trend right?
What other scientific arguments have been so divided, Scopes trial comes to mind.
On that one, the lefties were correct. They’re wrong on AGW.
Excellent piece. Spread it around.
Great movie clip, thanks.
Problem was my WinXP with Firefox5 wouldn’t allow it to play inside your page, even though I disabled any filters like ABP and NoScript, so I snagged the underlying link at http://www.youtube.com/v/vvObfrs3qoE and put that in a new window. I will be keeping it for reference as well as passing it along.
nice concise and well done!
Yer title does not translate to well over this side of the pond as out of 600+ MPs on all sides of the political spectrum only 2 voted against the climate change act, the only hope we have of getting a political change of any party here in the UK is when the true energy costs mixed with the colder winters hits the sheeple.
And at the moment there all worried about the papers and see a lamb to be slaughtered.
P.S. Great video.
Great presentation – thanks so much for sharing.
Alan the Brit, no, not me – tho’ it would have been a lot of fun!
This is a potential education coup for the anthropogenic global warming skeptics (or denialists, depending upon your leaning).
The presentation is flashy yet succinct, logical, and digested easily. True, there’s a snail carrying the globe rather than a pair of polar bears clinging to an overly small ice float… But it sums the current state of global warming/climate change/climate disruption (a/k/a crisis) into a manageable (and more importantly – accurate) understanding.
I’d like to think (well, “hope” is the more appropriate term) that this presentation is shown in middle and high school classrooms, as readily as “An Inconvenient Truth” – http://www.inconvenientyouth.org/pdf/educators_handbook.pdf . In fact, I suspect Mr. Vice President, as referenced by his published text, would support such showings:
“The fifth major goal of the Global Marshall Plan should be . . . to organize a worldwide education program to promote a more complete understanding of the crisis. In the process, we should actively search for ways to promote a new way of thinking about the current relationship between human civilization and the earth.” (“Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit” or the revisionist “Earth in the Balance: Forging a New Common Purpose,” pp 354-355, Al Gore)
Hey, if data can be changed, then why not book foci?
Mr. Phillips, thank you for clarifying the views of the planet outside of the USA. I personally would like to see a separation of science and state, but, as Mr. Springer points out, a 76 trillion dollar demand. I believe that the argument is being brought to us, not vice versa.
I was going to put this in Tips and notes but think it relates to my earlier comment, all the UK MPs have been patting themselves on the backs and thinking of more ways to waste money-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/house_of_commons/newsid_9531000/9531846.stm
This looks like it was done by the RSA Animate project.
Glad to see this finally got posted here at WUWT since I had suggested it last week on the Tips and Notes page.
Excellent!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank You Dr. Spencer! Thank You Anthony Watts!
This is a perfectly understated summary of the entire AGW agenda, in easily understandable language and format! I will distribute this widely, to politicians, co workers, grassroots political organizations, neighbors, friends, blogs, et.al.
To the noble Euro-commentators: the politics will stop being appealed to and referenced as soon as the recommendations from the AGW centers and spokespersons and “science authorities” cease to be vastly enhanced authority and revenues for self-appointed committees and immortal government bureaucracies, financed by the liquidation of most of the developed world’s productive capacity.
Let us know when that happens, ‘K?
It’s a fact of life that most (almost all) of those who push the global warming myth also push for more govt control of everything. They also push for the lessening of the power of individual countries and the surrenduring of that power to the UN.
That is a left wing position.
I’m sorry. This video was great up to the part about 50% reductions in emissions being the ONLY solution. After that, it is simply nonsense because it leaves out the possibility of capturing CO2 and sequestering it.
Just wait and let free markets give us answers? I support free markets. But as this video demonstrates so well, there may not BE any CO2 problem that ultimately needs to be solved. How can we expect investors to risk much developing solutions to a “maybe, but probably not” sort of problem like this?
I’d like to see the government giving maximum support to development of direct capture and sequester of CO2.
By the way, I have absolutely no connection to CCS research or industry – nothing to gain personally from what I’m suggesting.
Gareth Phillips says:
July 7, 2011 at 7:06 am
“So where is the reference to left wing politics? No-one outside the USA sees people like Barack Obama or Al Gore as remotely left wing with their traditional American values ( Economics, Capital punishment and military interventions)”.
Gareth,
Your statement that ‘Obama and Gore are representative of traditional American values’ exposes your ignorance and lack of understanding of the traditional values that founded and gird The United States of America. Spare us your dismissive ‘tosh’ and and any such additional piffle rot. The ‘Green’ agenda is closely allied with the socialist agenda, here in the US of A. Full disclosure is as good for basic climate science as it is for basic politics and every other human endeavor. We don’t seek to make ‘your job harder’ but we must not ignore basic facts to serve political correctness. That is just another way to be deceived and fail. We’ve had enough of that….
PeterGeorge says:
July 7, 2011 at 1:34 pm
Even though this presentation uses a cartoon for presentation it is a serious argument and not meant as a joke. Thus discussion of sequestration of C02 is not discussed. What do you want people to start laughing so hard that they miss the message?
Mac the Knife says:
July 7, 2011 at 1:48 pm
Gareth Phillips says:
July 7, 2011 at 7:06 am
“So where is the reference to left wing politics? No-one outside the USA sees people like Barack Obama or Al Gore as remotely left wing with their traditional American values ( Economics, Capital punishment and military interventions)”.
Gareth,
Your statement that ‘Obama and Gore are representative of traditional American values’ exposes your ignorance and lack of understanding of the traditional values that founded and gird The United States of America. Spare us your dismissive ‘tosh’ and and any such additional piffle rot. The ‘Green’ agenda is closely allied with the socialist agenda, here in the US of A. Full disclosure is as good for basic climate science as it is for basic politics and every other human endeavor. We don’t seek to make ‘your job harder’ but we must not ignore basic facts to serve political correctness. That is just another way to be deceived and fail. We’ve had enough of that….
You have socialists in the USA? Really? The reality is that this excellent site may be based in the States, but it is no more fundamentally related to the politics of that country than the global climate itself. If you really want to reduce the climate debate down to a perceived left/ right wing debate based on an odd idea of what socialism is in the US, that is your right. But be aware. that sort of attitude does huge damage to the debate in the rest of the West who do not have the usual right leaning tendencies of the US. What you see as communist or radical socialism we see as left of centre. What you see as ordinary tea party politics, we in Europe view with serious concern as being unhealthily right wing. The only way around this impasse is to leave politics out of the debate and stop this unhealthy obsession with climate skepticism being somehow a preserve of right wing Americans. It may be in the US, but trust me , it is not in the rest of the world. And yes, in Europe Barack Obama would be a member of the Conservative or Christian democratic party. You may think he is a socialist, but that is a laughable concept outside the US.
Sorry … are you saying those pols are for the above listed items?
Someone correct me if I am wrong, but Obama (and Party) campaigned against each of ‘Economics (see event event while on campaign with “Joe the Plumber”), Capital punishment (D party against traditionally) and military interventions’ (campaign pledge: “US out of Iraq by 2011”) …
.
“Camps”.
Re-education camps …
Will those camps be air-conditioned here in Tejas I wonder (thermo was indicating 104 deg F earlier today)?
.
Is that made by Bill Whittle’s Declaration Entertainment? If you’ve never heard of Bill Whittle, I HIGHLY recommend heading on over to pjtv to check out his smack down of Jon Stewart http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=56&load=1808
Epic
The pause in warming Spencer referred to has been accounted for by an increase in SO2 emissions. Since most climate scientists say CO2 the sensitivity is high, it makes sense to assume that when devising policy. Since the U.S. produces a very high amount of CO2 per person, initial reductions can come mainly from efficiency gains and won’t be that costly. Spencer’s assumptions about future energy technologies are not backed up by the research although no one claims gong green will be a cake walk. His political theories are just plain weird and I think underscore his own bias.
PeterGeorge says:
July 7, 2011 at 1:34 pm
Just wait and let free markets give us answers? I support free markets. But as this video demonstrates so well, there may not BE any CO2 problem that ultimately needs to be solved. How can we expect investors to risk much developing solutions to a “maybe, but probably not” sort of problem like this?
Of course we can expect that. That is exactly what the free market is. Rather than governments “investing” our taxes surely it is better that an investor(s) evaluates the risk and potential return and invest accordingly.
Having a low impact on the planet is fine. Reducing the pollution is fine. However, the Green movement is a socialist endeavor. I really had no idea until I quit drinking the Koolaid, and began thinking for myself.
A friend knew I was into reading intellectual stuff, so they lent me some book they picked up somewhere: “Green Political Thought.” Since then, I have been clued-in. Looking back on the socialist movement in the US, this desire to cripple commerce is an integral part of red thought and intent. If you honestly go to learn abt socialism in the US, you will find this to be the case. You can start by reading everything you can find on SDS. Ronald Radosh has a great personal history of being a red-diaper-doper-baby, raised in a ‘little red schoolhouse,’ and growing up red, and beliveing- until he followed the journalistic effort to try to disprove that the Rosenbergs were Russian spies. He figured out they were.
He could not jibe how he and his friends were so vehemently fighting that notion, wit the truth. Why fight it? How could all of his comrades be so confident? At that point, he began questioning everything, I really don’t know where he is politically, but his “Commies” memoir is totally entertaining and eye-opening.
Go to the websites of the red organizations. Just google “communist party usa” or “socialist party usa” and get started. Read for yourself. Watermelons – red on the inside, green on the outside. They want to bring down commerce to usher in the revolution.
REPLY: No, sheesh, it works fine. PEBKAC or system config. Try updating your flash or browser – Anthony
Anthony: thank you for response
I watched it yesterday 07 July and sent it to a friend (in Canada). He emailed back to say blank screen. I tried several times yesterday afternoon but also got blank screen but it works OK this morning 08 July.
I am in France, my friend in Montréal: perhaps it’s the French (dis ) connexion – small joke… best I can do at short notice. Great video and of course great WUWT site.
Bonne journée : JB
I’m proud that Roy Spencer is from the U.P.!!
.
.
(Upper Peninsula of Michigan)
Yes, a nice little video, presenting a far more balanced and sensible viewpoint than anything on offer from the powers that be or their megaphones in the media. I’m still completely unpersuaded of any need for “carbon” reductions, mind: all you need to persuade me is any evidence at all that the – still trace – amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere are having any discernible effect on anything. Oh, and the video played fine for me on a box (XP, F/F) which is frequently balky about such things. If you have problems, they have to be at your end of the wire.
And Gareth Phillips is quite right. As I’ve commented before, the only relevant political axis to the AGW pseudoproblem is the one from libertarian (where most of us here seem to sit, irrespective of claimed “right” or “left” allegiances) and authoritarian (the unelected crust of one-world fascists who are trying to create and maintain imaginary differences between us ordinary folk to distract us from what they’re up to).
The “socialist” impulse (at least, outside the US, where the word seems sadly to have become little more than a general purpose insult) is not about enforcing absolute authoritarian power from the centre – as is, precisely, the dark force behind all this, the NWO project. It is about designing a social system in which the people who actually do most of the (heavy, dirty) work in the real world are treated with respect, given some say on how things run, and not reduced to slavery, as so easily tends to happen under a free market system. (Read up on the Victorian conditions Marx himself was actually reporting on, and weep.) Certainly that’s what the British trades union movement was all about, and they founded the Labour party to work for those principles.
It is sad and shocking to me, and many others, to see the modern “Labour” Party in the UK sharing the vile and unhealthy commitment to centralising power in the hands of the greediest with the (nominally right wing, remember) Conservatives and the (theoretically centrist) Liberals. Does someone want to argue that that means all three of them are “socialist” parties? – You’d hear an awful lot of righteous anger from the two non-Labour parties if you suggested it. You’ll hear a lot more from softie socialists like me, who have abandoned all hope for the Labour party simply because there’s nothing remotely “socialist” about it anymore.
No. The political problem now – on a global scale – is authoritarianism. The traditional “right” and “left” can agree to differ on many things, according to our personal views about the ideal distribution of power in the world. But if we don’t unite soon against the marching authoritarianism which aims to stamp on us all, we will find out quickly enough that our differing viewpoints will become quite irrelevant in the face of diktats from on high. Authoritarians don’t give a monkey’s what you think, “left” or “right”, about anything: you just do as you’re told by them or get disciplined.
Repeat after me: The authoritarian brutes who want to stamp on my life are authoritarians. It doesn’t matter whether they appear to be, or even claim to be, mad right wingers or mad left wingers, they are authoritarians.
Know your enemy!
k1w1Kev says:
July 7, 2011 at 7:37 pm
Rather than governments “investing” our taxes surely it is better that an investor(s) evaluates the risk and potential return and invest accordingly.
The problem with this approach is “negative externality”. That is to say, if CO2 is harmful, there is a social cost not factored into the cost of fossil fuels. A price on carbon emissions is a “Pigouvian” tax, aimed at correcting the distortion of the free market.
What arrogance to speak for the rest of the world. What are you talking about? ‘We in Europe’? You are speaking for Europe? Is that Old Europe or New Europe? I suspect our friends in the former Soviet empire are rolling around on the floor laughing their asses off at you. Hey Lubos, is this guy speaking for you? And you say Obama is not a leftist? You realize all you are doing is calling yourself a radical far-left neo-Communist, right?
I won’t embarrass you by suggesting you define Right Wing. Because I know that to a radical leftist everyone who is not a lefty liberal must be Right Wing. Nevermind the ironic fact that the only Socialists you seem to dislike, the Nazis, were also Socialists like yourself, albeit National Socialists, you just happen to play for the other team, International Socialists. As someone else said, right wing and left wing just describe the spectrum of Socialism.
And what is it with you and our TEA Party gatherings anyway. I remember you last fall comparing us to Nazis (lots of seniors and elderly vets that fought the Nazi’s btw). I think you had said you are in the UK, a country that had experienced Nazi attacks first hand, so you should have learned something about that in school. Clearly you are existing in an alternate universe.
You are so far left that everything is to your right. Lenin is rolling over laughing. He could never dream that the seeds he planted would sprout into little useful idiots that launch vile at the perfectly normal freedom loving people at TEA Party rallies, people that revere the founders of our republic (who must also be right wing in your fantasy world).
Cute strategy though, hey let’s pull politics out of the science debate which has itself infiltrated politics. Kind of like pulling the body out once the cancer has infected the body. No, they are one and the same, and the reason is simple, control. Control over everything from light bulbs to toilet flushes to the entire carbon cycle itself. Science is merely acting as the rubber stamp facilitator to political control of the people. Now take the red pill Neo, you still don’t understand this Matrix thingie at all.
Anyway, with any luck at all, Socialism itself will be the final victim of the AGW hoax. I suspect that is were your vitriol comes from, deep inside you know that people are waking up and in a choice between freedom and the nanny state a lot more than you expected will jump ship to freedom. A few more financial catastrophes, Greece, Spain, Ireland, perhaps the EU itself plus trillions for AGW, and your beloved Socialist religion will collapse and join Scientology (or is it Climatology? I can never remember).
Remember that in the end of the Matrix, those that wanted to leave the system of controls, could leave. How would such a solution sit with you? Can your beloved Socialism survive without involuntary servitude? Would you let those that want to leave your Matrix I mean Socialism opt out?
Membership of the International Association for Emissions Trading includes some of these commie corporations:
Bank of America Merrill Lynch +
British Petroleum
Chevron
China Oil (Hong Kong) Corp. Ltd.
Citigroup * +
Deutsche Bank
Dow Chemical Company
Gazprom Marketing & Trading Ltd.
General Electric Company *
Goldman Sachs International * +
JP Morgan Chase Bank N.A. * +
Mitsubishi Corporation
Shell International Ltd.
http://www.ieta.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=168&Itemid=136
* major donors to Obama’s 2008 election campaign
+ major donors to McCain’s 2008 election campaign
http://sroblog.com/2010/04/19/top-contributors-to-barack-obama-opensecrets/
Who pays the piper plays the tune – they say.
Mike says:
July 7, 2011 at 7:27 pm
“The pause in warming Spencer referred to has been accounted for by an increase in SO2 emissions. Since most climate scientists say CO2 the sensitivity is high, it makes sense to assume that when devising policy.”
The pause in warming has not been accounted for by increases in SO2 emissions. The recent conjecture trying to expain this, shown no observed science to back this up, other than the fact emissions in the troposphere had increased recently in a few countries including India and especially China. Whereas especially the USA and Europe, SO2 levels have declined over the decades. The major problem here is that SO2 behaves differently when in the troposphere compared with the stratosphere. There is no observed evidence showing that human SO2 emissions reach the stratosphere. In the troposphere it has a very short life and interacts with water vapour creating acid rain. The SO2 that manages to briefly survive this has been demonstrated to show a warming. SO2 that reaches the stratosphere behaves differently and contributes to cooling. This is described in more detail via the link below.
http://www.tetontectonics.org/Climate.html
There are numerous volcanic eruptions that release SO2 into the troposphere each year and have no noticeable affect on global temperatures, where cooling at least is concerned. Only the major volcanic eruptions that reach the stratosphere that affect global temperatures with cooling and how much depends on the lattitude of the planet.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/strataer//
The global stratospheric aerosol optical thickness shown above has declined over the recent decade. Thus it is not contributing to the recent pause because it requires to have increased for this to have any scientific weight.
If the CO2 had high sensitivity then any warming suppose to have occurred would have already happened by now. If CO2 has low sensitivity than it has contributed very little towards global warming because virtually all of the rise has occurred in just a few short steps. The observed planet shows it is currently the latter because the steps have only occurred exactly at the same time of a strongish El Nino.
Any comment on this?:
http://www.desmogblog.com/climate-cover-up
He left out the fact that if we turn off the economy that the maximum global population that can be sustained is about 1 billion. Getting back to that level in a couple decades will redefine nasty, brutish, and short.
Alvy Singer in Annie Hall:
Much of the argument in this video is of the food-is-terrible-and-such-small-portions variety. Especially the bit about how dreadful and short human life was/is without the consumption of carbon-based fuels. MOST of that suffering human population has occurred in the industrial era and indeed the numbers can be attributed to the uneven distribution of the fruits of carbon-fueled industrialization. So does this film present an argument for more equality of income distribution? Hardly.
It is smug to acclaim the benefits of carbon-fueled industry without acknowledging the costs. But it is hypocritical to pretend that those costs accrue to a pre-industrial way of life when they are in fact the underbelly of industrialization.
Without any further improvements in technology ( I doubt this is the case) we will run out of fossil fuels that took millions of years to accumulate. It is as if there are those who proclaim that there is nothing left to improve upon.
Once our modern world degenerates, it is gone for good. It is man who is in danger, not the Earth. We have in our not too distant future the Next Ice Age to survive.
Do we have the will for survival, or have we lost it?
“The “socialist” impulse (at least, outside the US, where the word seems sadly to have become little more than a general purpose insult) is not about enforcing absolute authoritarian power from the centre – as is, precisely, the dark force behind all this, the NWO project. It is about designing a social system in which the people who actually do most of the (heavy, dirty) work in the real world are treated with respect, given some say on how things run, and not reduced to slavery, as so easily tends to happen under a free market system. (Read up on the Victorian conditions Marx himself was actually reporting on, and weep.) Certainly that’s what the British trades union movement was all about, and they founded the Labour party to work for those principles.”
Bravo Steve C!
Socialism is oposite of enforcing absolute authoritarian power.
Stated so well. Many thanks Anthony, and Dr. Roy Spencer for the work.
Socialism is turning over control of the economy to expert socialists. Who immediately begin building themselves dachas.
Until they run out of other people’s money.
Which is why I thank God you’re not allowed to vote here.
What??!! In what universe did this occur? Ending the practice of child labor in the US is less than 100 years in the past. The use of antibiotics is less than 75 years old. Life, around the world, prior to the invention of the steam engine was hellishly brutish. To claim otherwise is either disingenuous or ignorant.
Have a look at world historical population tables and poverty statistics, TomB. There are more people living in poverty today than there were total people alive at the time the steam engine was invented. Even back then, whether or not life was “hellishly brutal” depended on cultural circumstances and the distribution of local resources. There were indeed aspects of life — such as infant mortality — that today we would be horrified by but that were accepted as facts of life in the past. The conditions of people often worsened considerably as the result of wars of conquest, which were enabled by relative material surplus. Speaking of hellish brutality, the wars of the 20th century ran on petrol.
What’s this “to claim otherwise is either disingenuous or ignorant” nonsense? I suspect I’ve studied more history than you. I’ve written a book dealing with history of the industrial revolution. There’s a lot of my interpretation of the historical record that you might dispute — and that’s fair enough. But don’t assume everyone you disagree with is a stupid liar or you’re likely to become one yourself.
Speak for yourself, not for me!
DaveE.
The poverty rate, much to the chagrin of the UN & Friends, has crashed worldwide, halving in half the time it was to have. Have you seen?
And what was the average life expectancy prior to machine power and the industrial and electric revolutions?
It’s of those writers like yourself that it was well said (Huxley?): “History is a trick we play on the dead.”
I stopped watching at 1:27 because there is no such thing as fossil fuels.
This is a myth that must be eliminated.
Why must such a wonderfully truthful website as this only deal with ONE truth?
Do we have to go to another website to discuss Abiotic Oil?
This is one of the very few websites where stating that ‘CO2 is not pollution’ does not get your post deleted..
.. but does that mean that other controversial scientific truths must be avoided?
Besides.. there must be videos and other materials out there that can be useful in disseminating the truth about CO2 without back-handedly supporting some other false paradigm.
May I suggest the bi-line.. ‘commentary on puzzling things in science’ etc.. is too broad to be truthful. I have had too many posts deleted for that to be the case. As soon as the subject becomes something other than CO2 this site becomes over moderated.
Please Anthony (& mods).. allow this site to live up to its full potential.
Allow us to discuss all things scientific. I guarantee you the people who come to this site can handle it.. By definition the people who come here do not need to be protected from alternative thinking.
They are living it.