Story submitted by Stephen Rasey
On July 12, I wrote a comment cautioning not to underestimate the Gore Climate Reality event scheduled for Sept. 14, 2011. Mixing metaphors, I said that this was an “All In” bet and that this was Gore’s D-Day.
Pickett’s Charge from a position on the Confederate line looking toward the Union lines, Ziegler’s Grove on the left, clump of trees on right, painting by Edwin Forbes via Wikipedia
A better analogy is that this is Gettysburg, July 3, 1863. Al Gore’s Climate Reality is “Pickett’s Charge”: thousands of troops, marching in formation in the open field, supported by the artillery of the internet and mass media, bent on destroying the deniers that stand in the way of themselves and Washington D.C.
Today we are engaged in a great Civil War of testing whether our nation, or any nation, conceived in liberty and individual freedom, can long endure the calls to “save the planet” through strong government and world government to better control the use of energy, land, and air by constraining the freedom of its subjects.
Back in late-June 1863, Robert E. Lee carried with him knowledge of a letter from Jefferson Davis dictating terms of peace to Lincoln. It was Lee’s strategy to bring the Union Army of the Potomac into the open, destroy it, and then march on Washington. The Letter would be delivered to Lincoln and hopefully end the war.
Today, Al Gore carries with him the plans for the IPCC Rio+20 Sustainability Agenda. The “Climate Reality” Charge is to bring “denier’s” out into the open, destroy them, and carry the momentum into Rio meetings in June 2012 and Washington for the Nov 2012 elections. The green energy carpetbaggers are already among us. After a Rio recharged by a Gore victory, there will simply be more of them acting without restraint.
The critical question is, “Is there a strong enough opposition standing between the Charge and Washington, D.C.?”
Today, my answer is, “No, the skeptic’s are not yet strong enough.” Skeptics are more of a disorganized guerrilla force of sharp-shooters. (Of course, I could be completely wrong and I’m just blowing the cover of an entrenched ambush.)
I do not think skeptics can field an army; it is not in our individualistic nature. But that does not mean we cannot prepare the battlefield. We know from which direction they will come. We know the type of ammunition they use – much of it is blanks – false, misleading statement, but full of fire, smoke, and noise. The skeptics artillery of web sites can be zeroed-in. Counter their arguments before they have the opportunity to fire theirs. We can field forward observers, and squads armed with facts and backup.
We must make it obvious to all observers the skeptics’ side in the climate debate is fighting against slavery of billions of people. I’m willing to help as a defender of freedom. It will take some organization.
Who are our, Buford, Reynolds, Chamberlin, and Hancock?
In what may be a related action, Anthony Watts has asked readers to find quotes for “ice free Arctic by the year xxxx”. This is the kind of preparing the ground and zero-in we need to do now in advance of September.
We know who the CAGW leaders will be. Find every false, misleading, scary, idiotic, non-scientific statement they have made in the past twenty years. Create an index by name with pages listing those statement with links to the source. Keep it factual. Let their own words come back to haunt them.
We know the basics of their arguments and lines of “evidence”. Cross reference each of the statements above with the type of evidence.
How can we efficiently do this without a Wiki? A Wiki would only be vandalized. We also want an efficient division of labor. I don’t suggest we eliminate duplication, but let’s avoid quadruplication. Somewhere we should start a list of the Whos and Whats to research. Volunteers can comment that they are searching sources X over dates Y-Z and will report back in 48 hrs. Someone will have to organize it.
In the responses to Anthony’s plea for help, many people provided links without helpful context and additional information about Who, When, What and Where. We can do better. But the response has been helpful showing that Anthony (and other moderators) could delegate research work to the readership of the blog and they can do more target location and synthesis.
Is there a simple six column Excel format OR six element Text format we could use to make a table driven content page work?
Person, Topic, Date, Link, Quote, Comment and Context
Or
[P] Person(s)
[T] Topic
[D] Date
[L] Link
[Q] Quote
[C] Comment
Berényi Péter says:
July 17, 2011 at 12:20 am
The difference is that Gore most certainly has not gone through his severest struggle to get to the point where he is standing right now. The man has neither shame nor honor.
———-
I do not defend (nor attack), what Gore says, but I think this comment indicates what a good many skeptics seem to feel about him, and this where they go wrong in their thinking. The notion that he has no “shame or honor” would seem to indicate that he is intentionally trying to deceive. This is absolutely incorrect. He, to the very core of his being, truly believes in what he says and does related to climate change. To not understand this, is to not get a fundamental truth about those you would oppose.
I got interested in the mendacity of AGWers in the early 2000s. Until 2006 and the first half of 2007 they were on a roll. Virtually no one contradicted the official line. Al had his Oscar and Nobel Peace Prize and most people believed the IPCC was an unimpeachable source of peer reviewed science.
Cracks began to appear midway into 2007, and with climategate the bricks were falling out of the wall.
Nowadays, Gore is increasingly a figure of fun, and AGWers seem to be distancing themselves from him. I’m reasonably confident his event will be a damp squib, much like the Live Earth concerts. He has lost his clout.
When you think of what the sceptics have achieved in a very few years it is truly remarkable. A huge backlash is developing even without financial backing and the MSM. Just look at the opinion polls and the comments on previously pro threads. Be very proud of that.
It will take time and I have no doubt we will prevail, but we are up against those who will not, or cannot let the AGW bandwagon stop. The wheels are loose, but they’re not off yet. I believe Al Gore is the least of our worries.
(Please excuse the overly idiomatic language above….got a bit carried away!)
Gareth Phillips says:
July 17, 2011 at 2:07 am
Gareth – the post you are commenting on was written by Stephen Rasey not Anthony Watts.
Rob Vermeulen says:
July 17, 2011 at 12:46 am
Eventhough politicians might use scientific endience to guide their choices for society, scientists don’t base their conclusions on their political orientation.
Scientists are not supposed to base their conclusions on their political orientation, that much is true.
This seems like a Tea Party effort, one born out of TP desperation since they are going down the tubes on their irrational fiscal/deficit policies.
The left/right wing politicians that I have been emailing and talking to have allready ducked for cover on the CAGW issue. The Climategtate e-mails were the killer. Too many lies, obfuscations, distortions, manipulations. Kyoto is dead. Only a few pockets of delusioned politicans remain, as most of the world China/Russia/Canada/USA willl not sign on to any more Kyoto malarky. Yes, the green subsidy wars are still being waged, but budget realities is hurting more than anything we can do.
Nope.. please keep this science site free of efforts that smack of Tea Party resurrection politics.
I’m not as knowledgeable about the southern battles of the Revolutionary, as New England finished up its part with General Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga NY in 1777. Live Free or Die and all that.
How’s the correlation with Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown four years later? Seems to me there was some grousing about how a ragtag army of colonials managed to defeat the best disciplined army of the world despite the Red coats’ much greater resources.
As time has passed, my sympathies have trended more and more in favor of the people who decided – as they had every right to do – to leave the scheme of mercantilist predation cooked up by Alexander Hamilton and his co-conspirators and being rammed down their throats by a highly-paid corporate lawyer elected in 1860 to become the dictator required to impose the Morrill Tariff and other crippling exactions upon the import-dependent southern states.
Gettysburg is a lousy analogy, unless you’re a partisan of Algore and his conniving, thieving, lying sputniki. Those battered, exhausted troops in butternut and grey were the real heroes on that Pennsylvania battlefield, going up against an army of aggressive invaders under the command of politicians who had long suppressed their industry, and who were now blockading their coasts, seizing their resources, pillaging their homes, burning their crops, and molesting unarmed and helpless civilians.
From the perspective of the average soldier in the Army of Northern Virginia – the overwhelming majority of whom were not slave owners – those blue-coated foreigners dug in along Cemetery Ridge looked like nothing more than a bunch of armed and deadly tax collectors, intent upon doing to the people of the south what King George III had been trying to do to the American colonists in 1775.
Find another comparator, willya?
Oh, yeah. And you misspelled the name of Joshua Chamberlain, a decent man fighting in a truly evil cause.
Careful with the Gettysburg comparisons. Some of us are still a might sensitive about that. A Gore is a Gore is a Gore! He Ain’t a Confederate. He ain’t Lee! And this ain’t Gettysburg, PA. The first rule in leadership is Don’t Tick Off Your Own People!
Ref. Climate Reality, use Gore to beat Gore. He’s been very good at shooting himself in the foot (and other body parts).
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Al Gore’s strength comes from the multitude of people that have been brainwashed into believing that the government should be in charge of everything and that they will be given other people’s property out of a sense of “fairness”. These sheeple only see “what’s in if for me” and will believe anyone, ANYONE, who is now or has ever played to that selfishness. Al Gore still remains a hero who was cheated out of his rightful place as President of the US to these people. They will not listen to logic, truth or anything else that does not validate their ideological position. Al Gore does not care what skeptics say or if he is exposed as a fraud, he knows that his minions will never listen to those arguments. Their motto is “In Al We Trust”.
Do not over estimate that the truth will win out.
I know it is counter intuative to us reasonable folk but maybe we should take a leaf out of the oppositions book.
Noisy demo’s,shrill headline grabbing soundbites and the boycotting of firms who pander to this eco-bullcrap.
While I understand the sentiment, you are granting too much importance to [Gore] and his movement.
The chances are this latest piece of Gore theater will end up more like 10:10 and its “No Pressure” campaign than a great military battle.
Gore and his sycophants and supporters are more pitiful than dangerous.
Now that a skeptical community has grown up and matured under the steady abuse of shills and AstroTurf groups calling us every name under the sun, and have a pretty good idea of what we are saying and doing, and more importantly what the AGW promoters are saying and doing, there is no way they are going to pull off this ridiculous publicity stunt successfully.
That said, it is a very good idea to make an accessible data base of the phony, fear mongering manipulative trash the AGW social mania vomits out on the world.
Wow! Is the truth getting its boots on? Or will this also die in laziness, unwillingness to bell “the mighty cat”, indifference, apathy of the scientists, though skeptic?
As @Martin Brumby said “The thermageddonists hold virtually all the cards (MSM, the Scientific Societies, the great majority of politicians, the major “scientific” publications, Wall Street, the UN and EU and not forgetting limitless funds) I’m not convinced that our “rag tag army” can win.”
This battle might be won. IMHO it mostly depends how many little bloggers are enabled and multiplied, as indeed the MSM will never cooperate, lobbying politicos is quite hopeless,(unless they are honest ones), the only hope would come IF ALL would start blogging like mad, as many among us are already painstakingly doing daily, and I am not talking about Facebook. Get a WordPress blog and find your particular niche and audience, and start getting visits. In between your normal posts, insert powerful WATTS articles. Yet in order to reach normal people–as I have mentioned here long ago–WATTS has to come up with a new line of easily digestible science articles.
You have reached the scientists. 90 % have already decided for or against AGW, by ideology, but mostly for reputation & resources (fame & funds!) In that respect the debate is over. But now you scientists have to come down from your ivory to reach the simple populace with simplified science, to win votes! The alternative media will only reprint WATTS articles they easily understand, (I ought to know!) so make a new line of General Public articles with lots of pictures. The Greens (because of the money) are way ahead of you with lots of graphics and easy headlines, they get lots of photo footage. “Here is Greenpeace hanging a sign on the Sidney Opera house roof! They never raised a sign against BP killing the Gulf water, animals and people, but hey that is RedPeace for you. Globalist outfit funded by Wallstreet, will never embarras their Sponsor BP! Are you kidding? Ha!)
Only ONE major fact is on your side! NOBODY normal wants another carbon TAX, except the fanatic Green watermelons, red collectivist globalists on the inside! And they are lethal (No pressure?) and from what I have seen, mostly much more motivated than the salon skeptics, armchair generals within the scientific community. Yeah, you could set up a databank of statements, but average Joe will never be reached that way, who reads warmist Yahoo or the AGW China Post, and all other MSM and fortune magazines. Even architectural magazines are preaching Green technology! How do you want to win that war, unless you dig in your heels and start being the media! Otherwise save your breath!
Tom Rowan wrote what many others expressed:
” Algore is an oafish baffoon. Sit back, relax, and enjoy Algore’s latest parade of stupidity. At this late date, for reasonable men to muster a call to arms to defend against an idiot like Algore makes about as much sense as blasting air raid sirens to alert the citizenry of Manbearpig. Why raise Algore to any level of credibility at all? Why go throught the intellectual hysterics? Why pretend Algore is nothing more than a has been wannabe green cult guru fraud?”
The problem, Tom and others, is that there are many people who are completely taken in by Gore and believe what he says. A dear, misguided, friend spent the money to go all the way from Australia to the USA to be indoctrinated by Gore, and I am sure that she is not alone. We have to keep presenting facts to counter their deceptions. My #1 line is there is no scientifically valid proof that added CO2 would have any more than a minuscule effect on temperature (and climate), so there is no justification for any of the heroic measures being proposed to counter the supposed problem (a problem that does not exist).
On another tack, this one grammatical, please note that an apostrophe is used to indicate possession; it is NOT used to form plurals. And “it’s” means “it is”; it is NOT the possessive of “it”.
IanM
Being in the ad game, I’m trying to figure out what Alex Bogusky will bring to the party. He is (was) a big name in the business but is as self-absorbed as Gore. I can tell you that their presentations will be well crafted and persuasive, but like Bogusky’s TV spots, they will have no substance because the “Global Warming brand” does not live up to it’s promise.
The Gettysburg analogy is apt. The first objective for me is to determine the other side’s strategy, then what tactics it will use to reach it’s goal. It will be an all out assault on TV and online, think of it as RC directed by Steven Speilberg, written by Saul Alinsky, it will appeal to emotions, create titanic villians, and will attempt to stifle any criticism or debate through guilt and false association. The main weaknesses of its armour are “follow the money” and the sheer narcissism of its general, George Armstrong Gore. Fix bayonets.
Hoser says:
The real impact of the Green monster on freedom, jobs, and our future should be explained.
Yes, and the economic trashing of Europe and America is a major explanation of the current severe “recession.”
But the worst damage is to the environment itself. Colder is NOT better–who mows their lawn in the winter time? The human death rate by month goes up a bit in the summer–and a lot in the winter. And ameliorating the summer deaths requires air conditioning, which requires energy. Greenies are thus murderers, literally. They also murder by calling for corn ethanol, which has caused killing food shortages, and also caused many riots, killing even more people.
The biological effects of AGW hysteria are even more severe than the economic ones. They are NOT “exaggerated,” they are 180 degrees wrong, and this needs to be emphasized.
How to win a propaganda war with the extreme AGW massive public subsidy carbon trading type scheme group. Start a summary/overview of the key issues and the logic of the problem.
The current facts on the ground and in the past are on the “skeptics” side. Massive attempts to limit CO2 will not be successful, serve no purpose, and will result in trillions of public funds being wasted.
No need to distort the facts or mislead. Be polite and thoughtful. The skeptics can win over the environmentalists and the fiscal conservatives as increased atmospheric CO2 is beneficial to the biosphere and humans. Many environmentalists truly care about the environment and do not want trillions of dollars spent on boondoggle projects.
Higher atmospheric CO2 is beneficial. Plants eat CO2. The biosphere will expand due to higher levels of atmospheric CO2 with moderate slow warming
1. Plants eat CO2.
2. All of the food crops respond to higher levels of CO2 by increased yield and faster growth.
3. Desertification is reduced when CO2 levels are higher as C3 plants reduce the number of stomata on their leaves which reduces transpiration. (C3 plants, trees and scrubs, lose roughly 50% of their absorbed water due to transpiration. (One of the so called extreme AGW tipping points is greening of the Sahara desert which by the way has started to occur.)
4. Most of the warming was and will happen at high latitude regions. The biosphere is currently limited by cold temperatures as there are ice caps on both poles.
5. Planetary cloud cover increases and decreases to resist forcing changes.
6. 75% of the late 20th century warming has due to solar wind bursts which remove cloud forming ions by the process electroscavenging.
7. Solar cycle 24 is the start of a Dalton minimum or a Maunder minimum. There are cycles of warming and cooling that correlate with cosmogenic isotope changes. The Medieval warm period and the Little Ice age occurred for a reason. The is a technical reason for the current delay in planetary cooling. The planet will cool. With falling planetary temperatures there is no extreme AGW driver.
Pick the high road strategy. Military analogue is confusing. The skeptics are fighting a propaganda war with a small faction [who] personally benefit from the money spent on the extreme AGW schemes. Demonstrations and photo ops – the tactics of the extreme AGW schemers – are counter productive. Simple strategies such a short polite letter to congressional representative sounds like the best strategy. Keep the facts in public view.
There appears to be an impression that communicating facts will deter the Algorites. While an admirable effort, it will only deter a few, ones that CAN be convinced by facts, people with at least a scientific bent. Many others go only on emotion and no amount of evidence will sway them. So what is the answer? I propose that everyone who is skeptical to actually talk about the Algore PR effort on the day it comes out. I work for a utility that uses a lot of fossil fuel and am therefore “tainted.” People tend to discount my position based on my employment and ignore the facts that I bring up. Since I live in a very liberal area, I don’t even bring it or argue about it when it comes up. There may be others who behave like I do. I therefore will not hang back from discussing the Algore climate reality. I will discuss it and keep to the facts. And if I am attacked based on my employment, I will remain calm and ask them to address the facts, not the source. I may not convince them, but at least they will see there is not a monolithic “97%” consensus of all people who are conversant in the climate arena. I invite anyone else to do the same.
My sense is to just rely upon Al to do his own damage. Skeptics provide only credibility to him to meet him on his battlefield so to speak. It will be obvious what it is going on that day – a political stunt.
My view is that Americas “BS” detectors are already upon full alert with this guy; I suspect that he won’t be able to restrain himself from his shrill hysterics yet again and he will do further damage to their cause. His ego has no bounds.
Encourage compiling a list of major books and reports. e.g. both to add to WUWT’s reference pages as well as for broader categories.
Bob Carter: Climate: The Counter-Consensus – A Palaeoclimatologist Speaks Stacey International; 1st ed edition (July 15, 2010) ISBN-13: 978-1906768294
I am reading Ann Coulter’s new book, “Demonic” and it has good lessons about dealing with a mob and the warmists do fit that description. This post recommends reasoned arguments. Mobs do not respond to reasoned arguments. You need to provide them with mental pictures based on good arguments such as:
Headline: “Electricity prices to double.” followed by a picture of the sweltering poor unable to afford air conditioning.
Headline: “Greens stop coal plant in Africa.” followed by a picture of a hut where burning dung has to be used to cook food.
Video of some idiot saying, “Energy prices will necessarily skyrocket.”
Video of the unemployed in Montana where an aluminum plant was shut down because the greens in California will not allow power plants to be built.
Get the picture? Every time the warmists show a picture of a polar bear, show a picture from Detroit.
In the end it is the finance that will floor them – and floors them if you ask about it. They have no answer. And it is that that will totally enrage the population, whether in Europe or the US.
All the warming scientific chatter is intended for the US Congress, the EU and the UN and they are carrying it out on the scientific and moral fronts for use by power and tax hungry politicians.
The war can be won on the scientific front and still lost on the perception of moral issues fabricated by the left much as the media during the Vietnam War reported to the detriment of the US military by denigrating US military operations and in particular the US Soldier, Marine and Airmen. The result was loss of a war by the congress that had been won by the military.
Skeptics are more of a disorganized guerrilla force of sharp-shooters…
However we have the next “Landscheidt Minimum on our side, then it is only a matter of waiting…