Jo Nova has taken on the ridiculous “Map of Organized Climate Change Denial” promoted by Andy Revkin at the NYT with a map of her own and writes:
Two professors of sociology think they can explain why “Climate Deniers” are winning. But Riley E. Dunlap and Aaron M. McCright start from the wrong assumption and miss the bleeding obvious: the theory was wrong, the evidence has changed, and thousands of volunteers have exposed it.
The real question sociologists will be studying for years to come is: how was an exaggerated scare, based on so little evidence, poor reasoning and petty namecalling, kept alive for two whole decades?
Climate Change Scare Machine Cycle: see how your tax dollars are converted into alarming messages:
The key points
1. The money and vested interests on the pro-scare side is vastly larger, more influential, and more powerful than that on the skeptical side. Fossil fuel and conservative-think-tanks are competing against most of the world financial houses, the nuclear and renewable energy industry, large well financed green activists (WWF revenue was $700m last year), not to mention whole government departments, major political parties, universities dependent on government funding, the BBC (there is no debate), the EU, and the entire UN.
2. Despite this highly asymmetrical arrangement, the skeptics are winning simply because they’re more convincing — they have the evidence. The other team avoid debate, try to shut down discussion (only their experts count), they imply the audience is too stupid to judge for themselves, and then call everyone who disagrees rude names. The dumb punters are figuring them out. Vale free speech.
The evidence changed, but who wanted to know?
When the evidence began rolling in showing how the assumptions were wrong, the graphs were flawed, the thermometers were biased, and the “expert” scientists were behaving badly — who exactly would benefit from risking their career, cutting off the cash cow, being exiled from friends and colleagues, and being called a “Denier” for speaking the truth?
Read more here
David Falkner says at 11:11 pm : I take it, after seeing the critical role the financial system plays, we can all agree that the financial system needs reform and supervision?
The financial system is already hugely supervised (and in bed with) governments.As the Swedish film Overdose:The Next Financial by Johan Norberg shows, Hundreds of pages of regulation were added everyday before the financial crisis, which only made matters worse.
Maybe more competition, not state welfare, is what our financial systems need.
http://skepticalswedishscientists.wordpress.com/2011/06/27/the-pretense-of-knowledge/
Thumbs up 🙂
Excellent analysis.
In other news, George Soros is a convicted felon. Soros is Mr Moneybags behind the CAGW scam.
By the way was that Elmer FUD?
axel…love that vid unfortunately being dyslexic I kept seeing ‘all your bare arse belong to U.S.!
Smokey says:
October 7, 2011 at 3:17 am
Excellent analysis.
In other news, George Soros is a convicted felon. Soros is Mr Moneybags behind the CAGW scam.
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Too bad they don’t dump his rear in jail, instead he gets a reduced fine….
Philip Bradley says:
October 7, 2011 at 1:27 am
I think that your post could be summed up in two words: Money Laundering.
The same people seem to be at both ends of the scheme that removes money from the populace and feeds it into a ‘green energy’/’green tax’ operation that results in flows of money to the people that organize the scheme. See UK Prime Minister keen on green energy and tax subsidies to windfarms whose family are – surprise – making money from windfarms. Or US politicians (and their close aides) setting up carbon trading schemes then pushing for Carbon Trading bills in Congress.
This is all summed up rather nicely in the Jo Nova’s diagram.
Athelstan,
I have a very similar analysis.
The only way out of the developed world’s debt crisis are massive defaults or hyperinflation. The next few years are going to be difficult for most people. CAGW was essentially a phenomena of prosperity and will fade away as prosperity does.
Gail Combs,
Being a cynic, I am truly surprised that Soros wasn’t able to buy off that last judge in his 4 – 3 appeal loss.
The reduced fine doesn’t matter to a billionaire; it’s chump change either way. The only thing that really matters is that his criminal conviction was upheld. Soros is a convicted felon trying to make the world communist. If he gets his way, almost everyone else will be a pauper… but not him. His motive is to be the rich puppetmaster, one of the very few elites in a world of abject serfs.
Plato laid it out more than 2,000 years ago: a small, rich aristocracy, controlling a military force unwillingly supported by a large but impotent unarmed proletariat. The EU is the modern example; an unelected, completely unaccountable bureaucracy in Brussels dictating arbitrary laws to the countries under its suffocating thrall. All they lack is a military force. But that appears to be unnecessary, because the average EU serf has given up and accepted their fate. In America, only the Constitution and the 2nd Amendment stands between Americans and a similar fate. The approaching reckoning will determine whether Americans descend into hopeless serfdom, or fight off Soros’ terrible communist threat.
“David Falkner” asks (re-organized for clarity):
Q: “What is the point of origination? … Is this something where the cash flow originates with taxes and then flows through the rest of the system?”
A: “Cash” originates at the Mint, but only as a physical representation of Money, which “originates” with either a government body or a lending institution, and then flows through the public and private sectors, changing hands in various forms.
Q: “the graph is confounding what the measurement base is…How many units are there of that unit value and how do they distribute over this graph?”
A: It is a road map, not a graph.
Q: “What is the unit value at that point [the point of origination]?”
A: The point is, as with any “flow” system, pressure must equalize. If all the money were in the private sector, no one would care; but we, as a people, are being obliged to subsidize it through our tax dollars.
Q: “after seeing the critical role the financial system plays, we can all agree that the financial system needs reform and supervision?”
A: If by that you mean making it so the politicians can force the financial institutions to spend money where they want it, well, wasn’t the mortgage debacle enough for you?
“The real question sociologists will be studying for years to come is: how was an exaggerated scare, based on so little evidence, poor reasoning and petty namecalling, kept alive for two whole decades?”
Excellent point. But sociologists won’t be studying it, because sociologists have always been leftists by definition. Their jargon is taken direct from Marx. In fact nobody with any “scientific” credentials will study the question.
Compare: how many sociologists or psychologists have asked why the Soviet Union was able to control the world’s thoughts for 75 years? None. They don’t consider the question to be a question. In their minds Soviet thinking is just default, just the water in the fishtank, so they can’t even find the words to ask why people believed it. Their only question is why anyone dared to disagree with it, and their answer is the same answer Stalin gave. Deniers and dissidents are crazy.
The other map :A Map of Organized Climate Change Denial By ANDREW C. REVKIN appeared in the New York Times. So I thought I would take a look at the NY times. It is controled by the 27 members of Sulzberger family. In the last ten years, at least seventeen new family members have turned 25, the age at which they are allowed to join the trust’s board or vote for trustees… That means over half of the clan has grown up spoon fed CAGW and “Political Correctness”
To add to the stew, the President and CEO is Janet L. Robinson. Robinson is also a trustee of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Carnegie Corporation of New York is a foundation who donates big time to the Natural Resources Defense Council and Tides. (See Jo’s chart)
Natural Resources Defense Council is the guys fighting the pipeline to bring Canadian oil to the USA and to help “the Polar Bears win in court” http://www.nrdc.org/
So do you think the NY Times will give a “balanced view” and print Jo’s article in the same place they printed Revkin’s???? (/sarc)
CAGW is but the latest expression of the second oldest money making scheme in the world – extortion. Governments and bullies have learned from our earliest predatory leanings that there is profitability in Fear. All we are seeing today is a highly sophisticated evolution of a very old trick. Liberal socialism enables the extortion by the development and refinement of co-dependency.
The insurance industry exists because of it. The “military-industrial complex” [/sarc] thrives on it. Its basic Mad Ave 101: first you sell the sizzle (=the Fear), then you sell the product (= the Protection Racket).
They are all snake oil salesmen.
You forgot existing oil and fossil fuel monopolies.
Current producers lobby for environmental restrictions that prevent new entry and restrict supply allowing them to extract rents. As production falls off, they can sell carbon credits and collect high rents from their would be competition.
Nick de Cusa says:
October 7, 2011 at 1:13 am
And I thought it was a dryly humorous, tongue-in-cheek way of saying there’s way too much testosterone involved in this mess. That’s my take, anyway.
” Alexander says:
October 7, 2011 at 3:04 am
Siemens is wrong spelled, not “Seimens”. And the Munich Re ist missing, one of the world leading insurance companies, telling scaring stories about damages caused by AGW. ”
Oh Dear, Alex the not so great !!!
What about Climate Change Hysteria being misspelt ???
It should be spelt as it should, the Weather.
“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.”, Thomas Jefferson in “Notes on the State of Virginia” (1790)
when fear mongering predictions, such as the sky is falling glowball warming, do not occur as predicted, eventually all normal and intelligent people reject the fear mongerers and their cause.
That is why the ‘deniers” are “winning”. Reality is imposing itself.
Once again, it is shown very clearly that almost all of the money involved here is in the Pro-CAGW camp.
this is just a really nice piece of music…let’s reclaim the language starting with…[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK1w5M7WMI8&w=560&h=315%5D
Smokey says:
October 7, 2011 at 4:19 am
Gail Combs says:
October 7, 2011 at 3:29 am
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Gail and Smokey – I would actually be happy if George Soros and his ilk drained their own private bank accounts to fund the CAGW nonsense. Unfortunately, as Jo Nova’s chart reveals, it is WE the TAXPAYERS who are footing a large part of the bill.
Just think about it – the Solyndra scandal alone cost us $500 million +. The bungled GLORY satellite project – another $500 million +. Double digit increases in government funding for “climate change research” are costing billions. And to top it all off, the climate scientists got HUGE payoffs of stimulus cash to spend on their projects while ordinary citizens were laid off from their jobs in the private sector. Meanwhile, recipients of this largess, people like Jim Hansen, are PROTESTING energy projects which could bring jobs to the U.S. and Canada AND provide us with energy independence! And unemployment in the U.S. as of today is STILL ABOVE 9.0%!!
I do find it interesting that certain visitors to this site will argue strenuously over trivial changes to arctic ice or sea level heights, but fall strangely silent when the subject of climate funding comes up. In fact, most of the government/academic recipients (e.g. Mike Mann) of Climate Ca$h will NEVER talk about money so as to give the impression that they are “outfunded” or “underfunded” [LOL].
The good news? Things will be changing drastically for the government-funded CAGW in 2012…
Smokey says:
October 7, 2011 at 4:19 am
Being a cynic, I am truly surprised that Soros wasn’t able to buy off that last judge in his 4 – 3 appeal loss.
……If he gets his way, almost everyone else will be a pauper… but not him. His motive is to be the rich puppetmaster, one of the very few elites in a world of abject serfs.
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I am with you Smokey, the older I get the more cynical. I just wish the starry eyed collectivists of what ever stripe would figure out that the world financiers are not capitalists, they love socialism because it is the perfect vehicle to set up a global neo-feudalism with them as the new Aristocracy.
CAGW is just one of the methods they are using to herd us and it scares the heck out of me when I see the amount of progress they have made in the last two decades.
As a wise man one said, “if you don’t have the right to own property, you are property.” and I will add if you do not have the right to grow food you will starve to death.
The United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat I)- Agenda Item 10 of the Conference Report ,the Preamble says:
“Land…cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice; if unchecked, it may become a major obstacle in the planning and implementation of development schemes. The provision of decent dwellings and healthy conditions for the people can only be achieved if land is used in the interests of society as a whole. Public control of land use is therefore indispensable….”
And that is what I have seen over my life time. Government control of land in the USA is now complete with the 2010 law regulating farmers, the fight over whether we have the right to grow or eat food of our own choice is being fought as I type.
Another Judge, one who was NOT honest, actually stated:
“….the plaintiffs’ use of the Roe v Wade abortion rights case as a precedent does “not explain why a woman’s right to have an abortion translates to a right to consume unpasteurized milk…This court is unwilling to declare that there is a fundamental right to consume the food of one’s choice without first being presented with significantly more developed arguments on both sides of the issue.” Gee, I thought they both had to do with the right to decide what to do with your own body.
As if to show how pissed he was at being questioned, he said his decision translates further that “no, Plaintiffs to not have a fundamental right to own and use a dairy cow or a dairy herd;
“no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to consume the milk from their own cow;”
And in a kind of exclamation point, he added this to his list of no-nos: “no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to produce and consume the foods of their choice…” http://nonais.org/2011/09/27/wi-no-right-to-produce-or-eat-food/
That type of decision from a US judge really really scares me! So much for the 10th amendment to the US Constitution.
It seems the battle is being fought on several different fronts and “They” have all the money, expertise and government power.
I bless the guy who released the Climategate E-mails and people like Anthony, Jo Nova and the rest and I hope they get a starring role in future history books.
The money chart is nice. But there is a correction to be made: the legitimate governments need to be a separate component from the QUANGOs (quasi-authoritative non-governmental organizations) like the UN or WHO.
The money comes from where Adam Smith said it comes: the wealth of nations comes from land, labor, capital, and entrepreneurship. The govt, using “legitimate authority,” skims a little off the top.
Because govt has “legitimate authority,” technically it is not “extortion.” Govt is accountable to the citizens, so if we vote to defund AGW, or un-elect politiicians who fund AGW, then we have exercised our control over govt. When Govt gets so big that we cannot tell what is happening, that is a prob. Open govt and FOI mechanisms help us wealth-producing citizens hold our client, the govt, accountable.
The NGOs get funding from the govts. This is all a game of political favor. If the govt likes you, you get $. Every govt wants to play nice, and keep up with the Joneses, but for a NGO to have big bucks, it has to have at least one govt really contribute. This is a “benefactor” relationship. Mozart, Bach, Haydn, and others did not simply write great music; they were sponsored by some wealthy person who either wanted the status of having a musician in the house, or they liked the music, or both. So, they were supported to do their thing. So, if a govt happens to favor an NGO, they will donate. But as with the house musician, he who pays the piper calls the tune.
The govt also funds science. This is similar. but usually a little more strategic – to have military and economic advantage, govts support higher ed. This requires universities, which need to have a wide range of disciplines to attract students and resources. hence, land-grant universities, and govt funding of higher ed.
The international socialists see all of this. They figure out: if we can develop an agenda through academia to be followed by the seemingly benevolent, above-the-fray NGOs, then we develop the scholarly agenda of “rights” and “global warming,” then we can feed the govt the science, and tell the govt who to fund to act on the science.
So, the intl socialists have to make up some crises. “Overpopulation,” “reproductive rights,” “global warming,” “pandemic,” etc.
This is how I see the flow chart of money. Of course, this puts me at odds with some of the Watts Up audience, since I don’t buy the “overpopulation” story, and I don’t think we should be encouraging access to abortion, sterilization, and other population-control schemes in these developing countries.
But maybe the Watts Up readers will, little by little, see how this Brave New World / Logan’s Run stuff is just the same game of the international socialists seeking to get planetary control above the nations.
So, since it works this way, the nations, with tax base of citizens, need a box separate from the NGOs, who are under patonages – until they finally figure out how to get some true governing power.
Carbon trading / Cap and Trade would achieve that, as long as it was some global authority deeming how much energy consumption each country could generate, and each nation giving a tax to the global authority.
That authority reallt wouldn’t have to worry about whether cap nad trade works; it is just a scheme for NGOs to move from patronage status, with no real teeth, to legitimate govt with power to collect taxes from the generators of wealth, us citizens with our land, labor, capital, and entrepreneurship.
AGW = intellectual illiteracy
Fear sells by the bucket to the illiterate.
David Falkner, flow charts are either apolitical or political. The vast majority try to prove a point and are therefor political, even when the attempt is to present apolitical “factual” data and information.
An apolitical flow chart would be similar to an electrical flow diagram. It is designed to transfer facts delineated by commas into a conceptual flow framework and is thus read with straightforward and sometimes 3-dimensional comprehensive skill.
A political flow chart is another thing all together. Worse, I am beginning to see “scientists” dressing up apolitical charts with political attempts to persuade versus inform. Mann’s hockeystick, while not a flow chart, attempted to mix facts with his effort to persuade.
Jo Nova’s flow chart is political, thus is not read nor comprehended in the same way as an apolitical chart. You ask too much of her chart to have it labeled with factual source and cash amount.
Relating to this post and Jo’s political flow chart, our task is to determine whether or not our political perception of what has happened and is happening matches her perception, not how accurately labeled her chart is. Political flow charts are never accurate. They are opinions about how we think things are being done and how we think things OUGHT to be done. Regardless of which side we are on, we would all do well to keep that in mind when flow charts (or any kind of chart) are a part of a presentation.