Like what Judith Curry saw recently at NCAR’s seminar, he seems to think it is all about communication.
Part of the problem, he said, was that the climate sceptic lobby employed communications professionals, whereas “scientists are just barely competent at communicating with the public and don’t have the wherewithal to do it.”
Yet sceptics are the ones without any MSM support. So where do they get this idea? Full story here
A few things come to mind that he didn’t cover as other possible reasons skeptics are winning:
1. We don’t hide behind FOIA laws, then circumvent them when we lose. If you’d shared the data when asked, Climategate would never have happened.
2. We don’t rewrite history, either by deleting>morphing commentary like Skepicalscience does, or by creating questionable paleostatistical methods to enable pretending the trees tell us last 900 years were flat without any possible natural variance.
3. We don’t call people on the other side of the debate ugly denigrating names like deniers and flat earthers.
4. We don’t keep trying to link weather patterns/weather events to climate in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Burning issue: Hansen’s evidence that the world is hotting up
Moscow, August 2010
Russia experienced its hottest-ever summer last year – for weeks, a large portion of European Russia was more than 7 °C (12.6 °F) warmer than normal, and a new national record was set of 44 °C (111 °F). Raging forest fires filled Moscow with smoke, forcing the cancellation of air services and obliging people to don face masks.
Jim, get a clue, the Moscow heat wave had NOTHING TO DO with global warming. It was a blocking high weather pattern. NOAA’s own work concludes this:
NOAA finds”climate change” blameless in 2010 Russian heat wave
We mentioned this previously on WUWT, now it is officially peer reviewed and accepted.
NOAA: Natural Variability Main Culprit of Deadly Russian Heat Wave That Killed Thousands
Source here
Daily Moscow temperature record from November 1 2009 to October 31 2010. Red and blue shaded areas represent departures from the long-term average (smooth curve) in Moscow. Temperatures significantly above the long-term average scorched Moscow for much of July and August. NOAA credit. – click to enlargeThe deadly Russian heat wave of 2010 was due to a natural atmospheric phenomenon often associated with weather extremes, according to a new NOAA study. And while the scientists could not attribute the intensity of this particular heat wave to climate change, they found that extreme heat waves are likely to become increasingly frequent in the region in coming decades.
So Jim, when you try to tell us that the 2010 Russian heat wave was caused by global warming, people who know better have no choice but to call post normal science BS on you.
h/t to Kevin Hearle
What kind of sad joke is this? Is there not a soul at The Independent able to understand what started RealClimate? Yes, a PR agency. How about Desmogblog? Another PR effort.
Does anybody know of a single prominent skeptical site that has any PR professional involved with it?
‘James Hansen is known as the father of the green movement’. And there was me thinking that most of them didn’t know who there father was.
The biggest problem scientists have is that they point to ‘Events’ such as these to prove that AGW is occurring, yet when record cold events occur they say its just natural and nothing to do with AGW.
They can’t have it both ways, which is why they are losing the support of the majority of the public.
I don’t understand how Hansen holds his position of authority. Surely he has to go – as soon as possible. He has enough money to retire, surely?
One day Dr Hansen might discover it is the message that is the issue, not the messenger. The sea levels have not risen, we produced more crops this year than ever, hordes of climate refugees have not invaded our shores. In short every prediction of doom and disaster that he and the IPCC have made over the last 20 or 30 years has failed to come true. One can only scream the sky is falling for so long before people start ignoring you Dr. The gravy train of grant money has been shunted onto a dead end siding as I read somewhere else recently.
Another cold winter as is being predicted it will make it even harder for the band of CAGW believers. It is hard to convince people they need to pay more for fossil fuel energy when that energy is all that stands between them and frostbite. Windmills don’t work very well when the blades are covered in ice and solar panels are useless in a blizzard.
Why would blocking high pressure regions become more frequent? Texas shows that predictions of extreme weather increasing does not take into history which shows decades of drought/ heavy rain cycles. Moscow has hot summers which the blocking high only adds to.
Central continental climate patterns give hot summers and very cold winters. At least that was what I was taught.
If you put your money on a lame horse you gonna lose! it’s as simple as that.
Well, Pops, yer illegitimate offspring is taking a beating. So it should be, beginning with the Wirth theatrics back in 1988. You were good at communicating it back then….but the theatrics were discovered…revealed…and denounced. From there on your “Barely competent communication” revealed itself. No matter what you do, you cannot dress up simply bad science. Credibility is built on real results.
NEW ICE AGE, I assume we will have climatologists jumping aboard this gravy train next.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/10/new-climate-scare-europe-may-be-facing-return-of-little-ice-age/
5. Or maybe it is because sceptics are right.
I bet that did not occur to him ;-D
FD
Hey Anthony, does this make me your pet communications professional? Where’s my paycheck?
REPLY: Sorry, I’m still waiting for Exxon to pay me. When they do, I’ll pay you. 😉 – Anthony
It’s a common and truly bizarre delusion among leftists. The same complaint comes from all other branches of Stalinist “learning” and “science”, especially in the realms of evolution, genetics and psychology.
ALL the mass media, ALL governments and ALL schools carry the pure Stalinist message 100.000000000% of the time. No dissent is EVER allowed in those channels. Any hint of opposition is ruthlessly silenced.
And yet the leftists constantly roar that they don’t have ENOUGH coverage, that the heretics get way too much coverage.
“scientist lack the skills to make public listen
Shows the way the current thinking is.
While I agree that Hansen has over-estimated the dangers of global warming, he was correct about cap-and-trade, recognizing that it is merely an opportunity to “gam[e] the system at public expense.” And the clipping above shows that he thinks the anti-nuclear reflex in Germany is misguided. It’s a curious fact that some of his policy recommendations coincide with those who have completely different premises, another instance of politics making strange bedfellows.
Well, it is difficult to get the real news on certain websites. So was there a massive ice loss in the Alps this summer due to a hot and dry August and a similar hot and dry September (this month had even a record breaking average temperature). The loss was even 7% of the glaciers.
Also in Switzerland were record breaking high temperatures. But an article about these phenomena does not get into the headlines of this site. However the tiny spell on 18th of September with some snow in the Alps (being melted away within a few days) was brought as spectecular climate news although it obviously wasn’t. It was only the savage of even more massive ice loss. Some snow falling in September was not unusual at all in the Alps, but it is becoming more. Now we can read about ” a little ice age” in north-west of Europe. Completely nonsense for one cold December in Britain does not mean that we have a development like that. The rest of the winter was very mild even. Actually in the northwest of Holland it was not cold enough to reach enough ice thickness to scate. So the cold was appearing only at certain places but not in the whole region of north-west Europe. I think that the record breaking average temperature in Spetember for Switzerland, for Austria and in the northern arctic region of Norway was of more importance. The enormous melt in the Alps is of more importance. However no one will succeed to get that news on this website, for this website has certain selection criteria and a certain policy, further explanation not necessary.
Next link tells the true story about the Alps this year.
http://www.vwkweb.nl/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4798&Itemid=26
Sorry Homer. Push your seat in when you leave.
The real problem is that Hansen started making his doom laden prophecies 3 decades ago. Initially in the 1980s saying how the world was going to come to an end in 2012 due to runaway warming, snow ceasing, sea levels rising and huge and repeated storms inundating all low lying countries…. worked as a threat to get the politicians and greens and then the general populace believing what was being said. This started the ‘Climate Change’ bandwagon.
But that was 3 decades ago – and now people are looking around and saying – just a moment – where is the runaway warming – I’m snowed in for the third winter in a row, the beach hasn’t come ten miles inland and there are not any more storms than there are normally…. So the people are now falsifying the AGW theory themselves. They are ably assisted by the poor behavior of climate ‘scientists’ who all appear to be profiting hugely from something that is looking less and less likely to happen while doing all they can to hide their claimed evidence and workings for the apocalyptic forecasts.
However, the politicians and the bureaucrats have eagerly built empires, international agencies and tax systems based on the false forecasts. The fact that the justification for a tax has been removed will not stop them trying to collect it. If your department only exists because wind farms are being built or to measure the carbon footprint of industries – you will defend that department’s empire building against all logic. Unwinding thirty years of bureaucracy, regulation and hugely successful taxation will NOT be easy. Nevertheless if a brave politician were to repeal the carbon tax schemes and regulations – the upsurge in the economy of their country would be amazing. That is the prize to offer the incoming politicians.
They should call him the inventor of global warming.
20 years of being told the world is about to end due to global warming whilst at the same time we had twenty years of dramatically increased CO2 output but declining temperatures would tend to demonstrate to most reasonable people that global warming theory has already been falsified.
I blame the climate. It simply refuses to play ball.
Mainstream media support is not necessary for effective communication. People who doubted the Apollo lunar landings were successful in swinging poll numbers during the 1990s. All it took was a single Fox TV special (“Did We Land on the Moon?”) and the growth of the Internet. The same mechanism is at work today (“The Great Global Warming Swindle”) with Internet blogs such as this.
Message to planet Hansen.
If you have not got your message across by now, you never will.
You have had ALL the MSM in the palm of your hand, the BBC/ABC adore you along with all your Guardian reading left wing UN funded WWF/Greenpeace lobbying bedwetters.
All the left leaning governments of the world love you as you bring the prospect of easy taxation and power over their energy starved subjects. Even some rightish leaning ones see the benefit
of all that windfarm/solar panel business that you have helped create.
That your website is the only one still showing global warming should be a clue to you.
You were wrong, and whatever drove you to this endgame be it political, financial (as we know)
or just a gut feeling or that you had ‘heard the voices’, the fact remains the the ‘science’ of 1998
has moved on a long way and that to try to remain in that era and claim that you had
‘sussed out’ climate variation causes back then is patently absurd.
There is so much that you didn’t know then and to sweep all recent discoveries and data aside as an irrelevance is delusional.
When the time comes it will be unclear if you will be remembered as a misguided well meaning scientist who outstayed his usefulness or a dangerous nutter who helped destroy the modern world
by causing it to implode on it’s own pointless climate legislation.
They have a defective product that people aren’t buying, and they think it’s just about advertising. No – eventually people just stop buying defective or silly products. Pet rocks sold well for a time, and then they didn’t. It reminds of university marxists back in the 1980s telling me that communism was a good system, it just hadn’t been marketed properly. No – the product was defective, in fact toxic.
Skeptics are winning?
Maybe in the USA, and does it matter much in any case? Sure for Americans it matters. But there’s a much bigger world out there where the debate is far, far different, and where the recognition of existing commitment to the system change has transformed the discussion from “if”, to “what do I do to adapt”. This external context is going to frame the future for the USA. The USA debate is somewhat like a side event to the main action, and in the medium term it can only respond to the global context, not drive it.
“Father of the green movement”? Since when? Hansen may be the father of the AGW movement, but the environmental movement predates his appearance by quite some time.
If he’s not correcting such a blunder (or is it a brag?), then I’d say his communication problems begin at home.
This posting led me to look at the GISS personnel directory and Dr. Hansen’s entry in particular. I am puzzled as to what this phrase means, “The hardest part is trying to influence the nature of the measurements obtained, so that the key information can be obtained.”
People, some of them eminent on both “sides” of the issue have now been writing for years about communication – much of it concluding that “messaging” and “communication” so often mean – “listen to us – we are the experts – no you don’t need to see how we came to our conclusions”.
Coupled with what we actually see happening with the predicitions that have been made over the last 20+ years, particularly by Dr Hansen, and others……
Add in what appears to be incontravertible evidence that the money spent on pushing the message and producing it is thousands of times more than has been available to “sceptics”…….
In a rational world, the only conclusion is hubris, a sense of entitlement to special expert status, and a rather sneering irritation that the proles just won’t be told.
Come on Dr Hansen, roll your sleeves up, get your data together and sit down and argue it with us. If you’re right, (and even if you aren’t) what’s not to like?
I think there are three reasons why the global warming message is failing, having nothing to do with media.
1, It’s not getting warmer.
2. Great sacrifices needed to fight.
3. Global economy is teetering.
I think with these three factors staring us in the face it doesn’t take a sophisticated media campaign for people to get skeptical.
Mr Hansen you said:
[ ” Part of the problem, he said, was that the climate sceptic lobby employed communications professionals, whereas “scientists are just barely competent at communicating with the public and don’t have the wherewithal to do it.” ].
YET:
Realclimate .> Environmental Media Services > Fenton Communications > Tides > George Soros.org
Mr Soros also gave you $720,000,00 to “politicize Science”. in one year.[ page 123 and page 143 ]
http://www.soros.org/resources/articles_publications/publications/annual_20070731/a_complete.pdf
????
Neil Jones says:
October 11, 2011 at 3:49 am
Ve haf vays of making you listen.
‘Sceptics’ aren’t winning the battle, science finally is.
As I like to say: It is always something, ain’t it? It is simple amazing the disconnect from reality people and corporations have today. In their minds, they are not wrong. So when things aren’t going there way, it must be something working against them. James Hansen has the “I’m always right” mentality, so when things aren’t going his way, it must be something conspiring against them because he knows the message is right. It is no coincidence that people or corporations who have this “I’m always right” mentality usually stand to lose lots of money by not being right.
fredb: “Skeptics are winning? Maybe in the USA, and does it matter much in any case?
You simply have to laugh at the silly comments from those like fredb. Did he miss out on the positions of China, Canada and India? How about Russia and Brazil? Fred is an example of true denial. Hansen is right on this topic and anyone with the least amount of common sense can see it.
It’s time for alarmists to take heed of the old saying “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” It’s now time to realize you were fooled. You believed the wrong group. So, blame it on them and get over it. You now have been exposed to the truth. If you deny that truth you are now at fault.
Not winning in Australia. Carbon (dioxide) Tax expected to pass parliament tomorrow.
Same old story , the problem is seen as the selling of the message not the real problem which is the ‘quality’ of the message . And if you were really interested in improving the quality of the message , the last people you would turn to would be ‘death trains Hansen’ and ‘St Gore ‘ . Actual AGW skeptics should be happy the greens still see these people was leaders of their cause as they do it far more damage in the eyes of the public than any AGW skeptic could.
But one of the base problems in this case , is that the AGW hardcore simply cannot accept that any views other than their own should receive any coverage at all , so even if its weighted 99% in their favor that 1% is still to much for them . And so they bitch and moan about anything that does not follow the AGW support line being seen in public .They simply can’t allow for other voices and need to come with reasons why it happens , and so we get ‘fossil fuel conspiracy’ the the idea that AGW skeptics should be ignored becasue their ‘bad or mad’ etc .And its why you see some of them calling for censorship, banning of web sites , blacklisting of individuals etc . All that is fairly standard and accepted approach for religions, but has nothing to do with science which is what this is supposed to be about.
This is a tiny step forward for Hansen. Significant, since of course, he IS the “father” of the AGW movement; i.e, publicly, admitting to the fact his side is losing support. His illogical proposal to resolve the loss seems to be evidence that he now is in denial regarding its causes.
Well Jim, lets talk about your ABC scenario, The Hot Spot, Missing Ocean Heat and heat trapping clouds. And while we are at it, discuss “we must get rid of the MWP” and graphing trees rings data with temperature data.
@Mark
You forgot to mention that we are the spawn of Hitler, believe the earth is flat and are funded by Big Oil…
I admire Dr Judith Curry so much for what she as done both in Science and in the Blogosphere.
Mr Watts has an excellent site and I read it regularly.
But Dr Curry’s Blog gets so many more thoughtful comments than almost any other Climate related Blog.
I think she is wonderful and would love to meet her one day!
I always come here to WUWT for my daily dose of CAGWism (Hansen being a perfect example of that). In fact, you should have a daily CAGW forecast. It might go something like this…
The CAGW forecast for today:
Partly insane with obfuscation in the upper 70%. Chance of climate science ridiculousness is near 100%. Seven day outlook is for more of the same…
Scorle says:
“Actually in the northwest of Holland it was not cold enough to reach enough ice thickness to scate.”
This is an example of why skeptics are winning. Proponents of alarm tend to make statements implying something unusual is going on, but when one checks it’s fairly normal.
http://benjamincreations.tripod.com/europe/netherland/netherland.html
“the Netherlands has mild winters, and the ice often does not get thick enough for skating.”
“The Netherlands has a mild, damp climate. It has gentle winters and moderately warm summers. The sky is frequently overcast in winter, and fog often covers the land. Temperatures average from 60 to 65 °F (16 to 18 °C) in summer, and a little above 30 °F (-1 °C) in winter. Extremely hot or cold temperatures are rare. “
Current public opinion may be turning but U.S. public schools have been inculcating the concepts of climate change for a while now. We’re likely to have a generation that believes in doing whatever it takes to rescue the earth from climate change. Children are still being educated in this world view, along with the other collectivist issues.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Web site network includes “Climate Kids: NASA’s Eyes on the Earth,” which use cartoons, games, and other activities to teach children about man-made global warming and climate change. According to NASA’s budget request for fiscal year 2012, totaling $18.7 billion, the agency would dedicate $145.8 million to educational programs. The “Climate Kids” site is supported through NASA’s educational programs, according to a spokesman with the agency. See http://climate.nasa.gov/kids/climateTales/ .
schnurrp says:
October 11, 2011 at 4:27 am
“I think there are three reasons why the global warming message is failing, having nothing to do with media.
1, It’s not getting warmer.
2. Great sacrifices needed to fight.
3. Global economy is teetering.”
The West is teetering. And that’s where the warmists have achieved capital misallocation on the grandest scale. They have wrecked the economies; and it is time they go to Asia now, convince the people there of some of their make-believe, and wreck that part of the world. Follow Maurice Strong.
DDP has it in a nutshell – its not skeptics, its the science that’s winning…
P.S. Must make a mental note to employ a ‘communication professional’….
Mike Lorrey says:
October 11, 2011 at 3:37 am
Hey Anthony, does this make me your pet communications professional? Where’s my paycheck?
—————————-
Mike, Don’t tell me Exxon is behind on your checks.
Sceptics winning? “Mustn’t let that happen, must we?” Just a gambit to re-boost troop morale that must be getting low at the moment.
Assumptions of “randomness” & “i.i.d.” (“independent, identically distributed”) are patently untenable. Take a look at the cumulative seasonal departures from “normal”. Mainstream climate scientists: If you need help interpreting the patterns, please feel welcome to contact me. With Absolute Sincerity.
Funding for warmist ‘climate science’ outweighs funding for sceptical science by at least 100 to 1, a fact which Hansen dares not mutter, even to himself.
Funding for sceptics is almost entirely from private sources, while funding for warmists is almost entirely from public (government) sources.
And yet the sceptics are winning, even though warmist propaganda is far more sophisticated than that of the sceptics, who just use real facts and real science, a strategy which the warmists abandoned a long time ago.
It just goes to show that when it comes to government, the subject of ‘climate science’ comes at the very top of how best to waste money on useless projects and generating distorted conclusions from originally good data.
LIke Catholics, Leftists are essentially dogmatic, reliant on the dogma. The dogma explains everything, like how the working class are going to respond. So when they don’t respond correctly, the Leftist is left with two possibilities: one, the dogma is plain wrong – impossible: world-view-shattering proposition; two, the dogma hasn’t been explained properly to the people; for, had it been, the scales would fall from their eyes and the capitalist disinformation would have no traction. So, comrades, we must re-double our explaining efforts.
Taken from Australian parliament live TV stream tonight, here is a screenshot of democracy being shut out in the cold for the purpose of stopping a global warming of 0.00007°C.
i.imgur.com/KBrIt.png
Was it just a lame Liberal party stunt?
Are the rejected submissions just useless waffle that would add no substance to the debate anyway?
Is it the dulling of democracy from a government who no longer have any pretence of answering to the people?
Well now you won’t ever know.
Roy says:
October 11, 2011 at 4:26 am
This is one of the reasons I have to give Hansen reluctant credit. A man who tells you up front, on his official bio site, that the hard part of his job is cherrypicking the data to get the results he wants must at least be awarded points for chutzpah.
Regards,
Ric
“…it is time they go to Asia now”: The result might be that they construct DESERTEC in Tajikistan…
Scorle says:
October 11, 2011 at 4:04 am
….. However no one will succeed to get that news on this website,…..
You just have. So you’ve just contradicted yourself.
Now trying getting record cold/snow comments on some of the CAGW sites. That’s the difference -we aren’t averse to the occasional warm evidence. It isn’t novel and it’s not a trend.
These guys have more excuses for their failures than Obama and Biden combined.
Hansen and Obama are also using plays from the same playbook as well. Remember when Obama claimed the public didn’t like ObamaCare because he wasn’t able to get his message out to the public?
The era of the ‘Big Lie’ has not ended.
“Part of the problem, he said, was that the climate sceptic lobby employed communications professionals”
As usual for CAGW proponents, accuse the other side of doing what you do in spectacular failure.
But, they’re sorry ….. for damaging the cause.
http://www.1010global.org/no-pressure
One fundamental problem is that the whole issue has become completely binary and polarized in its presentation. As long as the questions and the communication of the fundamental issues is presented in a tone of ‘extremism’…. us vs. them, winning vs losing, denier vs warmer, etc. it will become ever harder to find common ground (if there is any to find), it entrenches ideas and makes it difficult to present nuanced interpretations (e.g. ‘the debate is over’) and it leads rapidly to unscientific thought (see ‘debate’).
Those that speak the loudest unfortunately also speak mostly in extremes (as seen by article on Hansen) and effectively paint themselves into an ideological corner from which one cannot retreat without losing face. The strategy then becomes about maintaining a reputation or position for fear of losing credibility…. the science becomes secondary and the communication of the science quickly ceases to be about the science and more about a ‘unified’ message. All this is bad for the scientific process, since it fundamentally is not scientific. The biggest casualties in all this are 1) the notions of doubt and uncertainty in the scientific process (they seem to have disappeared from the communication of the science for fear tha it somehow weakens a scientific argument, when in fact it is the opposite and anyone should be suspicious of any result without some discussion of the uncertainty), 2) the overall communication of science which has become reductionist and so overly simplified that it can only exist as a presenter of binary ideas (boiled down to yes-no answers, etc), and 3) open-mindedness and debate.
There is no side-taking in this comment. This applies to varying degrees to everyone working in the scientific research fields.
“Current public opinion may be turning but U.S. public schools have been inculcating the concepts of climate change for a while now. We’re likely to have a generation that believes in doing whatever it takes to rescue the earth from climate change. Children are still being educated in this world view, along with the other collectivist issues.”
Whatever the kids hear in schools, they hear much, much more through their social and other media. As they get older and more skeptical in general, they are just as likely to conclude the opposite of what they were taught. I heard a piece on, I think, This American Life, about how kids who uncritically accepted the AGW education doctrine, once exposed to the doubts which were never mentioned in the classroom, became skeptics, made more hard-core by the fact that they realized that they had been deceived in school.
Once you catch an “authority” in one lie, you can never again trust anything that they say/said. Once IPCC lies about glaciers melting, can you ever again take at face value anything that they say? Same goes for teachers.
This has never been about science. AGW has been about politics and wealth distribution from day one – follow the money and the power grab. It’s the only reason it every progressed beyond a few academics, AGW was a vehicle to bigger things.
The public gets fooled about many things, but one thing that it has a great nose for is when its being sold a bill of goods.
Hey! Look on the bright side. He’s admitting sceptics are winning. Would that have happened before climategate?
Excellent article, Anthony. Of course, a complete list of Hansen’s sins against science would be much longer.
Apparently, the PR firm “hired” by the pro-AGW position (a/k/a mainstream media) is listening to the insightful lamenting of Dr. Hansen and is refining its message to the unwashed masses. Take for instance the article posted yesterday (October 10, 2011) at Forbes.com entitled, “The Case for Climate-Change Alarmism.” http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2011/10/10/the-case-for-climate-change-alarmism/?partner=contextstory .
The article’s gist has a subtle twist on the “even if we’re wrong, there’s no harm in promoting cleaner energy” group-think. The author, William Pentland, references a March 2011 report issued by Sandia National Laboratory, which asserts that fat tails in power law curves… matter. The author seizes upon something apparently… noteworthy, “In complex systems, the slightest variation in initial conditions can create large deviations in future system conditions over time and not necessarily in predictable ways.” While this is a point long argued by AGW skeptics, to the alarmists, it’s manna from heaven.
Why? In Pentland’s own words, “Uncertainty is intrinsic to complex systems like Earth’s climate, but in the context of catastrophic climate change, this uncertainty is so severe that it is difficult to draw basic conclusions about how fat the fat tail is.” So, by pairing the terms “catastrophic” with “severe,” the PR firm is subtlety promoting the slogan, “even if we’re wrong, the risk is too great” and lending credence to Hansen’s notion that all things extreme are evidence of AGW.
That’s why the author (and by extension the PR firm or mainstream media) is totally comfortable penning the words, “All things considered, alarmism seems like common sense to me.” And where has something analogous been written previously? “…[H]e was not troubled by the fact that every word he murmured into the speakwrite, every stroke of his ink-pencil, was a deliberate lie. He was as anxious as anyone else in the Department that the forgery should be perfect… “
“Andrew McRae says:
October 11, 2011 at 5:57 am”
Interesting aye? The misinformation is stunning here in Aus this week. I am confident current Aussie pollies will end their future vote winning potential today Wednesday 12/11/11 (Or in US speak 11/12/11) when they vote in the carbon tax.
Actually Dr. Hansen knows that there are always droughts somewhere. This time it was in Texas. And actually we really don’t know that this drought was worse than occurred in some states during the “Dust Bowl.” On December 4, 2009, we had the earliest snow every recorded in Houston. In 2004, we had the first “White Christmas” in Houston since record keeping began. Hansen points to Northern Europe in 2003 without mentioning that there has been exceptionally cold weather in parts of Northern Europe since then.
.
The fact is that Hansen’s GISS temperature record is the only one that is still showing a significant warming trend. HadCRUT and NOAA Land & Oceans data are both based on the same NCDC data that GISS is based on. Neither of those show any significant warming trend since 2001. The UAH satellite temperature record does not show a significant warming trend either since around 2001.
.
Hansen laments climate scientists lack of skill as propagandists. He didn’t put it quite that way. 🙂 Obviously he believes is own propaganda. The fact is that folks are not stupid. And they resent someone like Hansen treating them as though they are. After a while, we start to see contradictions, exaggerations, name-calling, obfuscation, misrepresentation and such. And we are very uncomfortable to see people claiming to be scientists doing that sort of thing. They have destroyed their own credibility and shouldn’t attempt to blame anyone else for it. Hansen and his ilk have not been at a disadvantage in terms of getting their message out. The national media has been an unpaid public relations arm of the climate hysteria movement from the start. It is the climate crisis skeptics that have been at a disadvantage. We are prevailing with Mother Nature’s help and because our point of view can stand the test of reason.
It’s not “skeptics winning”, Jim. It’s climate fact prevailing over computer generated climate narratives. Skeptics are merely reporting the facts.
I agree with those who have already mentioned the indoctrination of young people over this issue – the next generation will be far less sceptical. Just 2 examples: take a look at the general studies A level papers (UK) or go into any library and check out picture books for young children. The left-wing/pro AGW bias is worse than anything the MSM have offered to date. I’m all for sustainable living because apart from any ethical issues,it just makes very good economic sense but our children are being brainwashed, blackmailed and frightened by some dangerous and yet subtle propaganda and their parents on the whole don’t realise.
kelly liddle writes “Not winning in Australia. Carbon (dioxide) Tax expected to pass parliament tomorrow.”
Please correct me if I am wrong; I am a Canadian not an Australian. It is my understanding that the Carbon Tax bill may pass in the House of Representatives tomorrow; NOT Parliament. It will still have to pass in the Senate.
Father of the Green movement? More like crazy corrupt prophet of the modern fake Green movement.
The real father of the real green movement was Norman Borlaug.
Slight fraudian slip there, “the earth is in increasing danger from rising temperatures”, which is a different thing than actually showing that there are rising temperatures. If there actually were rising temperatures, we would be in the exact same danger today as we were in formerly. He is admitting that what he is doing is making the possibility of rising temperatures look more frightening, not showing that temperatures actually are rising.
In other words, he is admitting that he is spouting pure propaganda.
Ooops! I guess November has meaning for me. YAY! Debt free…oh wait, carbon tax coming! Thanks Gillard.
Jim C, unfortunately they have the the numbers in the senate too, so it’s just a matter of time (next election)
Richard M questions my comment on whether the skeptics in the USA matter, and notes “Did he miss out on the positions of China, Canada and India? How about Russia and Brazil?”
Richard: I think you’re conflating strategic positioning for advantage in the political game of climate negotiations with the idea that these nations deny the reality of climate change. The USA is unique in that it’s motivations for resisting response to climate change is rooted in denial of the importance of the issue, whereas the nations you cite are trying to work the situation to their advantage. Neither are ethically responsible in my mind, but the point I made is that the USA is progressively being overtaken by the international strategic manipulations, and becoming less relevant in providing leadership. Perhaps you need to take a more nuanced reading of my “silly” idea, or come and sit in on some of the international negotiations, as I have.
Maybe I missed one, but I didn’t see any complaints about AGW in the Occupy Wall Street mobs.
It must be losing in the streets too.
Yet another fruadian slip, the skeptics are employing “communications professionals”. What is the chief difference between professionals and amatures? Simple, professionals get paid. I need to go out and start my own skeptics website, apperently, there is a lot of money in it. Oh, and Hansen doesn’t get paid.
Skeptics have data on their side – as in, the significant divergence between CAGW models & the reality of the satellite temp data over the last 10-15 years and that is the main reason they are “winning”the debate. How can any one say the science is settled looking at the data – it simply doesn’t support that conclusion. It’s not a matter of “winning” or “losing” or proper communicating, it’s a matter of data.
Supporters of AGW say the science is settled yet any one who looks into the issue even briefly will see that science is far from settled & that there are many qualified scientists doing research which suggest that CAGW is still just a hypothesis that is not proven. Even citizen scientists routinely poke legitimate holes in the hypothesis , as we see on WUWT & other similar skeptical websites.
Anyone trained in science knows that skepticism is supposed to be a core value to moving science ahead – you must continually question. So, when a group says “you must not question”, this is a red flag to anyone with scientific training that the science is not settled. A strong hypothesis stands up to questioning, a weak one falls down. The “you must not question” approach tells anyone with scientific training the hypothesis is weak.
The bottom line is the reason CAGW is “losing” has nothing to do with communication – it has to do only with the fact that it is a weak hypothesis with poor data support. It also because the public is not as ignorant as Jim Hansen , Al Gore et al believes – we can think for ourselves & what we see tells us there is way more to climate than just the CAGW hypothesis.
It takes a tremendous amount of energy to create and maintain blocking highs. We are talking about a pressure system that stays put in the midst of different neighboring pressure systems. These competing systems want to create winds that sweep them away. To stay put is really something. The key to any teleconnections with global warming is to determine what kind of energy is necessary to build and maintain more blocking highs than usual in that region.
And that is the sticky wicket. The miniscule amount of AGW energy in the “alarming” temperature anomaly change cannot be traced back into weather pattern systems mathematically to create evidence for this very thin global warming weather pattern driving hypothesis. That Hansen says it does makes him a snake oil salesman.
Oh! Dear, signs of anxiety that pinko bandwagon wavers are starting to look for another canticle to chant and politically gyrate around. Look at it this way Jim, 99% of bugger all doesn’t amount to much. Funny that. Nothing ever changes much except perhaps the gullible in evidence when the Sun is active. Now there’s a correlation worth chasing for grant money. See, there’s always something on the borderline between credibility and lunacy with which to turn a fast buck.
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shriek;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop did speak.
See ICECAPs take on the same subject. Great post, as usual :
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/political-climate
Don’t worry what Hansen says. Nobody takes him seriously anymore. It’s what the IPCC says that the world has to pay attention to… the IPCC and its pseudo science. The day the IPCC acknowledges that it has got it wrong about catastrophic man-made global warming and climate change being driven by Co2 emission from human activities, that will be the day to rejoice. However, as long as the IPCC is still being influenced by pro global warming government bureaucrats and individuals like Australia’s Dr David Karoly, expect more of the same global warming bullshit in the next IPCC report!
Yup the skeptics are winning ONLY because NATURE HAS FALSIFIED your CO2 Climate CAGW Doomsday Rapture hypothesis. It’s simple really. Let’s let a physicist explain it to you so you might have a chance of getting it.
“No theory is carved in stone. Science is merciless when it comes to testing all theories over and over, at any time, in any place. Unlike religion or politics, science is ultimately decided by experiments, done repeatedly in every form. There are no sacred cows. In science, 100 authorities count for nothing. Experiment counts for everything.” – Michio Kaku, a professor of theoretical physics at City College of New York
Also this guy had a very cogent point relevant to your particular brand of bad science Hansen:
“If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.” – Ernest Rutherford
http://www.PathsToKnowledge.net/think
The wheels have fallen off Hansen’s bandwagon and he’s still flogging the dead horses up front. Reality is starting to peek through the curtains of delusion. Hansen shows a lack of empathy yet again. Professionals have a career to retain. Communication professionals can minimize fallout from bad situations. They can promote results from good events. They can improve the meaning of the message. What they can’t do is tell porky pies and embellish falsehoods. That remains the territory of the used car sales professional.
Its not that the skeptics are winning, it is that the climate is not doing what Hansen predicted.
If temperatures were +1.1C right now as Hansen’s science predicted, they wouldn’t need to communicate better.
Eventually, Hansen will have to admit that the skeptics were right all along, not just winning some “imagined communications war” in the interim.
It appears that Hansen has recognized the truth in Lincoln’s quote: “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
Additionally, as P. J. O’Rourke noted in his recent book: even if climate change is occurring, there isn’t anything you can really do about it.
What’s really amusing now is that the same University-based climate scientists are now starting to say that ‘Oh yes, the sun has a role to play in Hale cycle modulations’. But of course, global warming is caused by carbon dioxide. Look at an ICSM researcher on the BBC this week…..
Five years ago, anyone who said the sun had anything to do with anything was trashed. They were right, but they were trashed.
Now the sun has to do with climate MODULATION, but not to do with global warming.
You know what I think. Next iteration is this: solar issues modulate on a decades-long thing, but oceans modulate on a 70 year cycle. But carbon dioxide is still the driver of global warming.
When it actually starts getting colder but carbon dioxide keeps going up, the game’s up.
And in the mean time a bunch of lying charlatans will have trousered about £100bn in fees, grants etc etc peddling shit.
The world does indeed work in mysterious ways……
Well how does it go? you can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.
Time has run out for the models, real life has caught up or almost, even the “dopeys” of the world are beginning to see the light. When our politicians stop spouting AGW dogma and focus on the real world i WILL BE A MUCH HAPPIER MAN. Keep spreading the truth!
Indeed Hansen, and they realized this in the 90s, so they hired PR firms to create RealClimate, Desmog, and others. The problem isn’t your years of patronage of PR firms. The problem is your message is so contradictory to reality that even children can see you are no longer scientists explaining the bounds of human uncertainty, but peddlers of an unwanted world government to deal with the impossibility of human-caused calamity.
We’ve been hammered over the head with the catastrophic global warming message for decades. I remember the first time I saw it “embedded” in a movie (The American President: 1995) I knew that it was going to be the new “China Syndrome”. Even though I knew it was coming, I was surprised at the hubris that followed. “An Inconvenient Truth” wins an Oscar, Gore and the IPCC win a Nobel Peace Prize, and a NASA Scientist runs a blog that’s little more than a mouthpiece to help his boss sell more books. The amount of doublespeak is embarrassing, with predictions that encompass nearly every conceivable meteorological phenomenon: rain, drought, lack of snow, blizzards, hurricanes, wind shear, heat waves and cold snaps. They’ve become masters of the art of postdiction, the opposite of prediction, when you look at something that occurs and claim that it’s proof of CAGW, even though you never actually said it would happen.
Facts are stubborn things. The Belt Parkway is still above water. The US climate, which involves 3 oceans, the tropics, the arctic and the largest lake system in the world, is still the same as it’s been for hundreds of years. Of the 50 state record high temperatures, 41 were set prior to 1985. Of course, we’re always reminded that the US only occupies 2% of the world’s area, so what about global records? Of 8 continental extreme highs (including Oceania) none were set in the global warming era, but in 1994 Australia experienced its all-time record low. Surely the catastrophic increase in temperature should have shattered records across the globe? Nope.
If we’ve learned one thing it’s that canaries should be renamed “Lazarus Birds”, because they keep dying in metaphorical coal mines and, within a few years, magically spring back to life. Extreme weather events come and go, just as they always have. The only difference is that now they get trumpeted loudly as harbingers of doom.
Sorry for the long rant, but the hypocrisy is maddening. If scientists predicted that an asteroid were going to strike the Earth, but their response was to call for a tax on nickel and iron, everyone would be skeptical of their announcement. If they claimed that radio and microwaves were causing cancer, it would seem odd if they continued to use cell phones, and downright bizarre if they invested in a broadcasting company. Yet that’s exactly what we see. Hansen flies to Australia to warn them about the dangers of fossil fuels, and we’re supposed to be impressed that Al Gore minimizes the carbon footprint of the small village that he calls a “house”. Let them become beam-free before they start taxing my motes.
fredb says:
“I think you’re conflating strategic positioning for advantage in the political game of climate negotiations with the idea that these nations deny the reality of climate change. The USA is unique in that it’s motivations for resisting response to climate change is rooted in denial…” &etc.
The only people who “deny the reality of climate change” are the misguided acolytes of Michael Mann, who has mendaciously attempted to erase the LIA and the MWP from the historical temperature record. Now they respond with obvious psychological projection, pretending that skeptics deny the reality of climate change.
Apparently fredb is one of those acolytes who still denies the reality of climate change. Unlike climate alarmists, scientific skeptics have always known that the climate continuously changes.
To Jim Cripwell
October 11, 2011 at 6:27 am
The Carbon Tax will be passed by the House of Representatives (lower house) this week. The Greens (the reason why we have a minority government) have the majority in the Senate (the upper house) so it’s a given that it will pass unchallenged.
Anthony, I beginning to wonder whether what Hansen is saying is right!
Honestly, I think he may be right, the problem is communication. And, it’s not that climate scientists have problems failing to communicate but that we sceptics have problems communicating, not to ourselves obviously, but to those who matter like the media and politicians. If anything, climate scientists are more like the general public than we are, so any problems they have may by many times worse for us. Aren’t the ones who are really having problems getting their message across the sceptical community?
That would make sense. Why, when we have such a strong argument – one which most of us find compelling, have/can we been totally ignored?
The reason dawned on me when I did an analysis of Judith Curry’s responses to the last article on climate communication. It shows that the posters were 20x more likely to report personality type “mastermind” than the general public and 3x more likely than climate scientists. The other half were in what I call “engineering” type personalities. That may sound good, but masterminds are notoriously bad communicators and engineers are little better. Almost no one was in the personality groups you typically expect of politicians: “empathy (F) or wanting to keep the debate going (P)”.
My feeling was confirmed when I asked a friend who is a journalist to view the Dr. Nir Shaviv video which I had found so compelling on solar activity. Her response was “I watched it, but it wasn’t my sort of thing”. She was totally cold to the message, and she is by no means stupid.
After doing some research, I’ve tried to translate our message into something that politicians would be more likely to understand:
We all appreciate that rising global temperatures in the latter half of the 20th century were a concern. So isn’t it good news that the temperature has not risen in the 21st century? Isn’t it also fantastic that we can be comforted by report after report showing that we have nothing to fear from extreme weather events because there is no evidence they are increasing. Why aren’t climate scientists and people like the Met Office hearing this “good news”? Why do they continue to see doom and gloom when the outlook looks so good?
How does it sound if there are any “FP” personalities reading this?
More importantly, I think we need to test this hypothesis. If results from Dr Curry’s blog apply here, then it goes a long way to explaining our problems and it may show us a way to get our message across. So it would be very useful to repeat the study on WUWT asking as many people as possible to undertake an MTBI personality test to see whether we find similar results here.
The MTBI link is here
John W says:
October 11, 2011 at 6:09 am
Thanks John W for reminding me how sick that 10:10 video is.
“The world’s most celebrated climate scientist ” ?
The liars sliped that in there.
Just how many celebration events have any of us been to to celebrate James Hansen as a climate scientist? I’m guessing a grand mass accumulated total of …. zero.
If he had just shown the incontrovertible proof for such a claim, we would all be on the bandwagon. That is why skeptics are more believable. Hansen, standing naked in front of the whole world wants us to admire his new clothing assemble, when any observer can clearly see he is as naked as a newborn babe. Ideology does not stitch into clothing sufficiently to cover his buttocks.
Hansen does not need to retire. He should be fired outright, as he does not act like the scientist, he was hired to be. Whoever hired a political activist to play the role of chief scientist should be dismissed also. Will there never be accountability within the bureaucracy that we are all paying treasure to maintain?! I fear not! GK
Smokey, thanks for your response to my comment. I think this illustrates my point well. When one perceives individual positions or nation’s responses in either-or terms, or only as being on one or other side in a perceived disagreement, then one is closing the door on developing reasoned debate. The politically contaminated global strategic maneuvering is nuanced and complex, as is the climate systems response to forcing. Neither are amenable to simple one-line position statements. And, to try make my point a third time, when a nation positions itself on a foundation of stark absolutes, it loses the edge in the global game of chess. Such is, in my opinion (and like everyone’s comments, it is opinion), the situation of the USA, where the rest of the world is progressively out maneuvering the simple stance taken by the USA. I suspect it is rooted in the history of leadership as a global super-power status, and the inertia to engaging in a new world paradigm of competitiveness.
I am a sceptic, an I have never been arrested!
Mr. Hansen, sceptics:
1. Don’t have an entire UN agency set up to prove their point.
2. Did not remove the MWP from the first IPCC report.
3. Do get fired from jobs for thier understanding of climate.
4. Did not get to testify before Congress until recently.
5. Are wiling to debate anywhere and time with anyone and usually win. (always so far I think)
6. Don’t have entire university department dedicated to prove AGW.
So you see sir your wrong in so many ways. As Albert said: “it only takes one person with one fact to prove me wrong.” Mr. Hansen you’ve been proven wrong.
Scotty,
You’re assuming some innocent confusion or resistance.
The AGW movement has long been riddled with thoroughly untethical participants who found that morbose pays.
“Why do they continue to see doom and gloom when the outlook looks so good?”
It’s either that or admit they have been lying and throw their own careers away.
There’s potential lawsuits, liability, crimnal prosecution etc.
It’s not like they can claim they just got the good news when they have been doctoring data and cooking up phony evidence of AGW for years.
Are you suggesting they can simply say “Gee whiz looky here, good news, So never mind”?
Hansen is demonstrating the next step for the perps. Another twisted squirm on their road to ruin.
“So Jim, when you try to tell us that the 2010 Russian heat wave was caused by global warming, people who know better have to choice but to call post normal science BS on you.”
There are two very important issues with this sentence. The most important is the typographical error. The second problem is with possible misinterpretation of the meaning of BS, some interpretations of which might be insulting to those with a Bachelor of Science degree. Perhaps not as bad as the unintentional slight suffered by a chemist that I once worked with. His last name was Baetz and he had a Master of Science degree in chemistry. Once a person respectfully addressed him as Master Baetz.
The meme that “the other guys are winning because we are scientists not PR professionals” is itself a PR campaign developed by dedicated PR elements in the ‘global warming’ industry.
The cynicism that these bastards can stomach in support of their religion/business model is astounding.
The problem that ‘global warming’ is facing is not that the scientists aren’t PR experts, it is that they are not scientists.
I think the reason why the “skeptics are winning” has nothing to do with lack of PR. I think it has more to do with:
1. Air temperatures aren’t warming for the past decade.
2. Ocean temperatures aren’t warming.
3. Sea levels are not rising any faster than they had been before.
4. There is no catastrophic melting of polar ice.
They can stand on the hill and cry “wolf!” all they want but at some point the wolf needs to appear or people are going to stop listening. Hansen says they just need to yell louder. I say they need to produce evidence of a wolf.
The record should reflect that the “moon conspiracy” program was broadcast on Fox TV, not Fox News Channel, and was part of a series. . I recall seeing Leonard Nemoy as the narrator of one such show involving the search for Atlantis. Other programs involved UFOs, crop circles and the like. Hey, if you thought the X-Files (also a Fox TV product) were based on reality, you would have loved that kind of nonsense!
It’s not a battle dammit… It’s supposed to be science!
Did Hansen ever consider that global CO2 emissions are up about 35% since the year 2000, yet temperatures are basically FLAT.
click on the pdf of the publication referenced here.
http://www.pbl.nl/en/publications/2011/long-term-trend-in-global-co2-emissions-2011-report
on page 11 of the PDF it shows CO2 emissions have grown from 25 x 1,000 million tonnes CO2 to about 33. – a 33% increase!
Yet global temp’s have been FLAT for a decade.
http://www.climate4you.com/GlobalTemperatures.htm#Estimates%20of%20recent%20global%20temperature%20change
Oh, the PR skills are just fine. It’s the message that rubbish and the odor of it does not pass the sniff test. If is smalls like dung, it probably is.
Jim Cripwell
You are correct the Tax is expected to pass The House of Representatives today and still needs to go to the Senate in about a month. Ask Why It Is So has got it right.
fredb says:
October 11, 2011 at 4:19 am
Maybe in the USA, and does it matter much in any case? Sure for Americans it matters. But there’s a much bigger world out there where the debate is far, far different,
Take the word ‘cheap’ away from the phrase ‘cheap coal’ and the debate ends regardless of whether or not you believe in ‘Climate Change’. The price of a ton of steam coal in the port of Amsterdam is in excess of $100/ton. The mine-mouth price of steam coal in Wyoming is $14/ton.
Coal delivered to Texas ends up being about $40/ton.
The debate in the US is whether or not we should use our ‘cheap coal’ to our economic advantage. Most of the rest of the world doesn’t have ‘cheap coal’.
With all due respect, doesn’t Hansen (above photo) look just like [snip – pointless, rude, let’s not go there – Anthony]
It is interesting to reflect on how we arrived at the current perception of AGW and what to do about it. In the beginning, the AGW movement established a convincing connection in most people’s minds between CO2 and the warming trend of the last two decades of the 20th century. At that time CO2 became the main culprit and CO2 producers became the targeted “enemy”.
But the “enemy” had to be further defined as only fossil fuels to allow for “carbon neutral” schemes such as ethanol and boidiesel to flourish. Nuclear electric power generation, a true carbon neutral process was not even considered as a solution because it was just “too dangerous”. Never mind the history and science, it is the perception that counts.
Then before the top of the natural climate cycle was fully developed, “global warming” had to morph into “climate change” and because CO2 did not match up well with a period of no warming or cooling, the only acceptable energy then became “clean energy”.
Now we have people thinking we have to have “clean energy” at whatever price because unclean energy will no longer be acceptable. The original rationale for avoiding fossil fuels is probably forgotten by most. It is clean energy for it’s own sake. (Don’t give a lot of thought to what “carbon neutral” will do for us, just trust us on that.)
Sometime in the future, the public in Europe and America will discover how much of an economic price we all have paid fo allay their fears of the nebulous tipping points that seemed so real but were always just ahead of us ….. if we don’t act now.
Scottish Skeptic said,”Why aren’t climate scientists and people like the Met Office hearing this “good news”? Why do they continue to see doom and gloom when the outlook looks so good?”
It’s not hard to understand their lack of reasonable response to good news when you understand that their’s is a political agenda predicated on global warming being a disaster in the making. There is absolutely no percentage in their ever having good news—their goal is to scare the public into handing over all of their rights, freedom, and money to save the planet.
The agenda is all about wealth redistribution and a huge grab for power and wealth while creating a one-world totalitarian/socialist government.
This is exactly why, in the face of loads of contradictory, valid opposing evidence, the warmists continue to claim warming and its supposed damaged. They cannot afford to admit the truth; if they do, they cease to exist and have failed in their goals.
Standard leftist narcissistic defense, “the messaging is wrong”. It can never be that the message has been heard, considered, and rejected. Or that the message is just plain wrong.
Scottish Sceptic says:
October 11, 2011 at 7:32 am
You are so correct but of course sceptics will have problems communicating. Fear is a well proven political tool so the politicians love it. The scientists who do hold the alarmist “beliefs” continue to have it reaffirmed by people in high places which makes them feel good and correct. How many scientists would otherwise get to tell prime ministers or presidents what to do?
Sceptics have many theories so they do not tell one story which is much less convincing. We are also sceptical of each other. Peak science organisations in “the coalition of the willing” US , UK Australia Canada New Zealand all agree. Another point is most sceptics say they don’t know what will happen in 100 years but the believers do say they know. So we have peak scientific organisations and politicians from our political spheres saying the same thing. On the other side the sceptic rabble and yes there are scientists amongst them but their views are discounted in various ways.
So now pretend you know nothing who would you believe?
It doesn’t feel to me in the UK that the sceptics are “winning”. We have yet to see a change in Government policy that would signal this. But if it makes warmists feel better to blame the growth of scepticsm on fossil fuelled propaganda so be it. This is just another example of their lack of judgement and detachment from reality.
Several weeks ago I wasn’t feeling well, so I spent a quiet day watching TV. It was on the weekend, and the Sy Fy channel was running their Natural Disasters marathon. Each and every show I watched had some natural disaster that was somehow attributed to Global Warming. I don’t remember the names of all the shows, but there were dancing electrical impulses, caused by some weird atmospheric situation: caused by Global Warming. There were intense low pressure systems forming huge freezing storms ( the Day after Tomorrow?) caused by: Global Warming. I swear there were earthquakes, tornadoes and volcanoes, all caused by, you guessed it, Global Warming. ( As a side note, how do all the cell phones and computers keep working for the handsome heroes and scantily clad heroines when Mother Nature is unleashing her fury and decimating mankind,especially when they are in remote places like Yellowstone or mountain tops or landing strips in the middle of nowhere? All it takes is a thunderstorm or a bozo on a backhoe and I lose touch with the modern world.)
So when I read that Hansen thinks that it is a lack of communication that isn’t getting the message across, I have to laugh. Movies, television and newspaper articles, all repeat the global warming mantra ad nauseum, and no one is “funding” that kind of propaganda. If the tide is indeed turning, when people hear “Global Warming/ Climate Change” all the time, even in their entertainment, you can’t blame a lack of communication. Perhaps, the lack of predictions coming true, or the hypocrisy of the lifestyles or the price of the Green economy are changing peoples’ minds, but I doubt it is a communication issue.
Time Hansen et al woke up and smelled the coffee. It’s been a long time since people believed what they read in newspapers or other MSM like the BBC. Critical reasoning has become a watchword to a huge number of the ‘ignorant masses’ and a failure by the powers that be to even attempt to answer difficult questions on a large number of topics as fuelled our scepticism of the party line ever further.
Sorry Hansen old bean, but we no longer believe your alarmist drivel!
The heartbreak of a Messiah Complex.
fredb says:
October 11, 2011 at 7:44 am
“[…] it loses the edge in the global game of chess. Such is, in my opinion (and like everyone’s comments, it is opinion), the situation of the USA, where the rest of the world is progressively out maneuvering the simple stance taken by the USA. ”
Like Europe.
Ok, so let’s see if I have this straight. The US is “resisting response” because we’re stupid. The other countries are doing so because they’re scheming, conniving bastards. Got it.
“Michael Larkin says:
October 11, 2011 at 6:13 am
Hey! Look on the bright side. He’s admitting sceptics are winning. Would that have happened before climategate?”
I don’t see it that way, Hansen isn’t admitting that the sceptics are winning per se. I think his statement is a call to arms more like “If you don’t love America the Terrorists win”.
I think he is trying to scare washington into action. He is really saying “Your new taxes are in danger of dissapearing, lock arms and ignore the facts” in my opinion.
This is a ruse which is hardly suprizing given the source.
Pseudo science is losing. That means science is winning and we are not skeptics. We believe in science, not pseudo science.
Skeptics are winning because it is cooling. They’d be losing if it were warming.
==============
JL:
Where is the common ground?
We say let’s see the evidence, they say trust us.
We say show us the data, they obstruct access to it.
We say show us your work, they say trust us. We want to discuss facts, they want to discuss consensus.
We want to compare the model results with the actual climate, they say close enough.
We want to talk about the scientific method, they want to talk about the IPCC position papers.
Where is the common ground here?
You’re right, Jim, skeptics are winning the argument, but not for the reason you state.
You’re losing because your logic is fatally flawed, being based on shifting sands of time itself.
Relativity has left the AGW building empty, swallowed by the void.
Hansen’s climate scare predictions need to be collected and added to the Climate Fail Files…
“…a new national record was set of 44 °C (111 °F). Raging forest fires filled Moscow with smoke, forcing the cancellation of air services and obliging people to don face masks…..”
And no one connects the poor air quality to the deaths???? Heat PLUS poor air has got to be a real killer for the elderly or the ill.
Falacy of selected evidence?
Watts you state: 1. We don’t hide behind FOIA laws, then circumvent them when we lose.
Anthony with regard to this statement, consider this a demand under the FOIA (ok you are not legally obliged, but your statement makes you morally obliged to provide the information).
The scope of this request is to reach any and all data, documents and things in your possession, including those stored or residing on any of the specified or referenced computers, hard drives, desktops, laptops, file servers, database servers, email servers or other systems where data was transmitted or stored on purpose or as a result of transient use of a system or application in the course of day to day research or product processing work that is owned or contracted for by you or any of your officers, managers, employees, agents, board members, academic departments, divisions, programs, IT department, contractors and other representatives.
For the period 2005 to present
2. As used herein, the words “record”, “records”, “document” or “documents” mean the original and any copies of any written, printed, typed, electronic, or graphic matter of any kind or nature, however produced or reproduced, any book, pamphlet, brochure, periodical, newspaper, letter, correspondence, memoranda, notice, facsimile, e-mail, manual, press release, telegram, report, study, handwritten note, working paper, chart, paper, graph, index, tape, data sheet, data processing card, or any other written, recorded, transcribed, punched, taped, filmed or graphic matter now in your possession, custody or control.
…
1. All documents that constitute or are in any way related to correspondence, messages or e-mails sent by Anthony Watts to, or received from, any of the following persons:
(a) Dr. John Christy,
(b) Dr. Judith Curry
(c) Steven Mosher
(d) Jeff Id (AKA Patrick Condon and Jeff Condon)
(e) Thomas W. Fuller
(f) Stephen McIntyre,
(g) Dr. Ross McKitrick,
(h) Dr. Patrick Michaels,
(i) Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr.,
(j) All research assistants, secretaries or administrative staff with whom Mr. Watts worked.
That statement struck me as well. When liberals lose an election, that is their cry – they did not get their message out. not that no one wanted to hear it, just that they did not get their message out. And why do they not do a self inspection instead? Because they cannot conceive of the fact they may be wrong. IN that respect, the AGW crowd is just like liberals. They no longer question, they have accepted the mantra blindly. And so when not everyone follows suit, they lament their lack of getting the message out.
The message is getting out, but just not in the pre-packaged PR job they would like all to recite. The Mainstream Media, while an excellent cheer leader for the movement, is no longer a monopoly.
It is being reported that The Weather Clown will soon announce that the loss of ice in Greenland has accelerated to critical levels. Since the satellites say otherwise I presume a recent atlas is the source.
@JJThoms says: October 11, 2011 at 9:39 am
Can you wait until the next big oil check comes in?
JJThoms says:
October 11, 2011 at 9:39 am
You assume that the laws in question are used for abuse only. McIntyre and others who filed FOI requests did so only after making polite and reasonable requests for data. After nearly a decade, the data has not arrived. There was no abuse of the laws by McIntyre or the other major sceptics who filed them.
Sometimes I think we don’t see the forest for the trees. Like all logical people we take a subject and dissect it to the point that we forget what we were actually looking at in the first place.
Right about the time Mann inserted himself into the ATI Hockey Stick Lawsuit there has been a snowball of propaganda being spewed from MSM. Easily 20 to 1 in favor of the CAGW crowd. We have editors falling on the sword, Hansen getting arrested, and of course the bizarre conference to justify Mann’s investigation. Any of this on its own would be trivial but wave after wave of studies being released and the actions of the “Team” at this moment in time suggest some concerted effort to regain the moral high ground.
All of these would indicate to me a circling of the wagons or propping up of the troops for what they see as an imminent show down. What is it that they know that we do not?
Forecasted weather for the next couple of years will not be in their favor?
ClimateGate 2.0 after the release of Mann’s data?
Inquires into the IPCC data that the EPA used in error to support the agenda?
Some unknown piece of data that is about to be released that once and for all ends the debate?
There is something that has sent them in a tizzy and I don’t think it’s so much the science that is being released to refute the idea. They have a machine in place to whitewash / discredit any of this and it has worked well for them for 20 years.
I have not seen what I think will be the true beginning of the end for this Global Hoax. When the ship does start to sink we will see the rats jumping.
fredb says:
October 11, 2011 at 6:55 am
Richard M questions my comment on whether the skeptics in the USA matter, and notes “Did he miss out on the positions of China, Canada and India? How about Russia and Brazil?”
Richard: I think you’re conflating strategic positioning for advantage in the political game of climate negotiations…..
___________________________________
Their news media is showing articles about global cooling.
There is this article from Pravda (Russian propaganda rag)
Earth on the Brink of an Ice Age, 11 Jan 08
http://english.pravda.ru/science/earth/106922-earth_ice_age-0
The Chinese Government “allowed” this research
Chinese scientists, are predicting Global Cooling: Zhen-Shan, L. and Xian, S. 2007. Multi-scale analysis of global temperature changes and trend of a drop in temperature in the next 20 years.
Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics 95: 115-121. http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/clim/reject/rejectex/132.html
The Times of India: Global warming or global cooling?
“Almost as soon as the Kyoto Protocol on global warming came into effect on February 15, Kashmir suffered the highest snowfall in three decades with over 150 killed, and Mumbai recorded the lowest temperature in 40 years…..
In the media, disaster is news, and its absence is not. This principle has been exploited so skillfully by ecological scare-mongers that it is now regarded as politically incorrect, even unscientific, to denounce global warming hysteria as unproven speculation.
Meteorologists are a standing joke for getting predictions wrong even a few days ahead. The same jokers are being taken seriously when they use computer models to predict the weather 100 years hence…..” http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2005-02-27/all-that-matters/27852441_1_global-warming-global-cooling-computer-models
Daily News & Analysis, India: Global warming may become global cooling this century
“…A leading analyst has claimed that global warming is set to become global cooling this century, with temperatures falling by about 0.5 degree Celsius by the year 2050.
According to a report in Daily Express, the analyst in question is Professor Michael Beenstock from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who said that theories of climate change are wrong.
He warned that climatologists have misused statistics, leading them to the mistaken conclusion global warming is evidence of the greenhouse effect…..” http://www.dnaindia.com/world/report_global-warming-may-become-global-cooling-this-century_1345011
fredb says:
“When one perceives individual positions or nation’s responses in either-or terms, or only as being on one or other side in a perceived disagreement, then one is closing the door on developing reasoned debate.”
I would agree on the validity of this statement, if the nations (note the plural) involved were on the same playing field. When it comes to climate change, though, the playing field resembles a gopher-pocked fairway. Although the potential of exchanged monies is clearly what compels all countries to the negotiation table (let’s drop the pretense of “saving the planet” for the remainder of the post), the receipt and allocation of the same represent the impact craters on that playing field – and rightly so.
“The politically contaminated global strategic maneuvering is nuanced and complex, as is the climate systems response to forcing.”
One of those is inherently chaotic, while the other is oftentimes (deliberately) chaotic. I think your comparison, although quippy, falls flat.
“…[W]hen a nation positions itself on a foundation of stark absolutes, it loses the edge in the global game of chess.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but where has the USA adopted a “foundation of stark absolutes” vis-à-vis the climate change debate? Indeed, Hansen himself is employed and funded by the very same nation you accuse of taking a polarizing and “simple stance.” If anything, the climate change debate (yes, it still is a debate because that’s what the scientific method encourages) has been appropriately vigorous in the USA, while a majority of the developed world has elected to assuage its capital success and accompanying environmental guilt via the selling of carbon indulgences. Yet you appear to label such sales as an “edge” – interesting.
Al Gore invents internet
Jim Hansen invents AGW
Al Gore endorses and builds career on AGW
Internet skeptics destroy AGW
Marie says:
October 11, 2011 at 6:27 am (Edit) . . .
Yes that’s the worst of it, young minds being polluted.
My grand daughter was severely penalized for putting in an essay on why the AGW thingy is rubbish. Her argument was sound, her references numerous yet she was penalized, marked down severely, because of her position.
It does make me question how much we might have been “guided” in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. I am pro democracy, rule of law, market economy which makes me conservative and realistic in my eyes. If we had been taught AGW at school perhaps we would find fewer skeptics in our midst.
The skeptics are winning the war of public opinion because they are providing more plausible scientific arguments supported by current field evidence for their views and in terms that the public can understand and via a media that the public most often use ,namely the internet.
As Eddie Valiant would say, “what a Maroon!”, when science becomes more about winning than about finding the truth, all kinds of sophomoric shenanigans ensue. I’m at the point where, when some warmist tries to argue with me I just say that the existing data is so hopelessly taint that he might just save his breath.
Dr. Hansen:
Have you ever considered actually releasing the data? How about having a fact-based discussion of the issues?
He said: “They have been winning the argument for several years, even though the science has become clearer.”
==================================================
Tell me again what it’s called when you have two opposites going on in your head at the same time………….
————————–
If the word ‘argument’ in Hansen’s quote is meant in the sense of a discourse or debate, then there has been no real argument in public made by the IPCC supported ‘consensus’ scientists of ‘settled’ alarming AGW. They have simply posited their biased findings with an assumption of authority and did not argue/debate/discourse with skeptics. They rejected public open venue participation with skeptics; they hid behind the illusion of the IPCC sanction of authority.
There has been an increasingly significant level of arguments in open venues by the skeptics. The public sensed reasonable and comprehensive arguments in the skeptical positions in open venues. Word gets around fast. Surely, the MSM feeds vicariously off the open venue blogs. : )
If there had been, for the last 10+ years, frequent open venue argument/discourse/debate in public between alarming AGW science supporters and skeptics, then the trust in climate science would have been maintained at a credible level and the science would been improved.
It wasn’t communication failure, per se, for the IPCC supported science of alarming AGW, it was a virtual absence of the most critical communication at the heart of science . . . . the absence of interactive communication with the skeptics in public in open venues.
Why was there a lack of debate in public open venues? It seems the climategate emails show the tip of the iceberg that is the answer.
John
The problem is the truthfulness of the message and the messenger not the lack of a professional PR consultant to advise in packaging the message. The lack of warming in the last 12 years explained by:
1) Chinese coal emissions or
2) Volcanic eruptions in equatorial regions or
3) AGW heat is moving into the deep ocean or
4) Stupid deniers not listening to the message. 1+1 = 3 so says we all.
Hansen in his book compares Venus where the atmospheric pressure is 90 times that of Earth and the atmosphere is 98% CO2 to the earth where CO2 makes up 0.038% of the atmosphere. CO2 is 230,000 times on Venus than the earth. There is no explanation why Venus is compared to the earth.
Hansen might have explained, that in the geological past CO2 levels have been high when the planet was cold and low when the planet was warm. It appears on the earth, planetary cloud increases and decreases to regulate the planetary temperatures which can override the greenhouse effect of CO2. Hansen might have noted that CO2 greenhouse effect is logarithmic such that subsequent increases in CO2 has less and less effect. Roughly 60% of the warming due to doubling of CO2 should have occurred now. It has not which indicates the extreme AGW hypothesis is not correct. A doubling of atmospheric CO2 based will result in less than 1C warming with most of the warming occurring at high latitudes. The biosphere will expand due to the slight warming and increase atmospheric CO2 content.
Hansen notes the IPCC models predict a reduction in the magnitude of storms if the planet warms as most of the warming will occur at higher latitudes, which reduces the temperature differential. Hansen’s comment is the IPCC models are not accurate and what will happen is not predictable. Hansen might have used Gore’s scientific explanation, which is obviously anyone who watches television is aware the climate is changing and the cause is AGW.
http://www.amazon.com/Storms-My-Grandchildren-Catastrophe-Humanity/dp/1608192008
Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity
This is an example of IPCC communication that has gone awry.
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/LandseaResignationLetterFromIPCC.htm
‘I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized. In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns.
Shortly after Dr. Trenberth requested that I draft the Atlantic hurricane section for the AR4’s Observations chapter, Dr. Trenberth participated in a press conference organized by scientists at Harvard on the topic “Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity” along with other media interviews on the topic. The result of this media interaction was widespread coverage that directly connected the very busy 2004 Atlantic hurricane season as being caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming occurring today. Listening to and reading transcripts of this press conference and media interviews, it is apparent that Dr. Trenberth was being accurately quoted and summarized in such statements and was not being misrepresented in the media.
All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either in the Atlantic or any other basin. The IPCC assessments in 1995 and 2001 also concluded that there was no global warming signal found in the hurricane record.”
You can’t be just a bit pregnant.
[You need to categorically who you are.]
From the article: “… climate science itself is becoming ever clearer in showing that the earth is in increasing danger from rising temperatures”.
Does anyone have any idea what specifically Hansen could be referring to here?
A drastic change in tactics is called for. Lord Monckton has wanted to debate Gore for years. Perhaps Hansen should defend Gore’s book and the CAGW theory in a debate with Lord Monckton. Of course that will not happen. Many important facts that Lord Monckton made before climategate were confirmed by Phil Jones in the BBC interview on February 13, 2010.
kim says:
October 11, 2011 at 9:25 am
“Skeptics are winning because it is cooling. They’d be losing if it were warming.”
I would be less skeptical about the warming effect of CO2 if it were warming. Because that would indicate that the AGW theory describes reality correctly.
Keith Battye says:
October 11, 2011 at 10:39 am
“My grand daughter was severely penalized for putting in an essay on why the AGW thingy is rubbish. ”
Same old, same old.
I remember writing 2 essays about Mao back at college in the mid seventies. One very positive. Got an A. Then one were I pointed out that he was a mass murderer, and some other things. Got a C. That teacher generation are now the bosses in the different departments in government. You just cant get rid of them until they retire.
Gail Combs says:
October 11, 2011 at 10:29 am
“According to a report in Daily Express, the analyst in question is Professor Michael Beenstock from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who said that theories of climate change are wrong.”
http://economics.huji.ac.il/facultye/beenstock/Nature_Paper091209.pdf
Michael Beenstock and Yaniv Reingewertz …
“We show that when these shortcomings are corrected, there is no evidence relating
global warming in the 20th century to the level of greenhouse gases in the long run.
…
This means that
an increase in CO2 emissions only has a temporary warming effect. We show that
previous investigators have confused the temporary with the permanent.”
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Vancouver+Western+Canada+facing+record+cold+temperatures+this+winter/5528542/story.html
But, but, I thought the science was settled? /sarc
Hansen says:
“Part of the problem, he said, was that the climate sceptic lobby employed communications professionals, whereas “scientists are just barely competent at communicating with the public and don’t have the wherewithal to do it.”
_________________________________________________
Yeah right. Hansen has the gall to say that when he has Congresswoman Rosa Delauro’s Husband Stan Greenberg working to advance his agenda????
“…He was also a strategic consultant to the Climate Center of the Natural Resources Defense Council on its multi-year campaign on global warming……NGO board memberships include the American Museum of Natural History, the National Endowment for Democracy, The Africa-America Institute, the Citizens Committee for New York City, the Council on Foreign Relations, and Refugees International…….Republican pollster Frank Luntz says “Stan Greenberg scares the hell out of me. He doesn’t just have a finger on the people’s pulse; he’s got an IV injected into it.” http://ilf.ndi.org/panelists#StanleyGreenberg
His company Greenberg Carville Shrum directed campaigns in 60 countries, including Tony Blair in the UK, Clinton in the USA and was responsible for the Bolivia fiasco. Greenberg “…specializes in research on globalization, international trade…” http://216.92.66.74/index.php?title=Stanley_Greenberg
Bolivia fiasco: http://www.nlginternational.org/report/NLG__BOLIVIA_REPORT_2007.pdf
Then there is his other company:
“Whether you want to win your election, lead your country, increase your bottom line, or change the world, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner can help you find the answer,” GQRR states on its website http://www.gqrr.com/
Greenberg writes for the Democratic Strategist http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/ and also formed Democracy Corps http://archive.democracycorps.com/
“ Greenberg’s work for private sector organizations – including major corporations, trade associations and public interest organizations – focuses on managing change and reform….Greenberg has conducted extensive research in Europe (particularly Great Britain, Germany and France), Central and South America (Argentina and Brazil), and Africa (South Africa). He specializes in research on globalization, international trade, corporate consolidation, technology and the Internet. For organizations, Greenberg has helped manage and frame a number of issues – including education, school financing, American identity, the economy, environmental regulation, international trade, managed care, biotechnology, copyrights, privacy and the Internet….
Greenberg has advised a broad range of political campaigns, including those of President Bill Clinton and Vice-President Al Gore, Senators Chris Dodd, Joe Lieberman and Jeff Bingaman; Governor Jim Florio and gubernatorial candidate, Andy Young; former Vice-President Walter Mondale; and a number of candidates for the U.S. Congress. For many years, he served as principal polling advisor to the Democratic National Committee.
“Greenberg works jointly on private sector projects with prominent Republican pollsters in the United States – including Fred Steeper (pollster to former President Bush), Bill McInturff and Linda DiVall – to bring a bi-partisan focus to public issues….” http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Stanley_Greenberg
Hansen is complaining when he has a heavy hitter like this guy working to advance his message???? Not to mention the United nations and most school. Who do we have? The Heartland Institute, Arthur B. Robinson and the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, the blogs, some individual scientists, a couple brave journalists?
Truth always wins.
Even now their argument is that the 6 mm drop in sea level was caused by La Nina. But the previous El Ninos remain without effect?
They discover now the suns influence ( UV influence ) on the regional weather – see new ice age scare in england after years of constant sun axyome. It is only a step to recognize suns further influence on the bigger climatic events like El Nino and La Nina.
There was another scientists who found a historical series of 30 years of El Ninos and respectively La Ninas in the past (I recall something like the years 570-650 need to search for that article) which were much more significant then the present ones.
It remains only to connect dots and you got the explanation of several decades of recent warming. How twisted must one be to still to deny all and say the ChuckNorris molecule is ruling the climate?
They lost the scientific argument as they do not make science any more.
Hansen and company is losing al lot of ground because they keep losing things to talk about.
And clinging to remnant bromides only goes so far.
It must be tough for them not to be able to elaborate on so many elements of AGW that have become simply nonsensicle.
As witnessed here, like no other place, there many major elements of AGW that have no legitimacy at all and the proponents look foolish having ever attemped to pitch themin the first place. Let alone cling to them with ever increasing lunacy.
What a fine example it is that the NFS only now figures out Archimedes’ buoyancy principle.
Oops! What a whopper.
So, Jim, was this little snaffoo because “scientists are just barely competent at communicating with the public and don’t have the wherewithal to do it”?
That’s like saying all the lipstick covering the pig hasn’t worked because it’s not very good lipstick.
Or that if only professionals had applied the lipstick no one would see the pig?
Fredb. The US could easily leave the rest of the world behind in competitiveness if it would simply leave this discredited idea of CO2 caused global catastrophe behind and develop all of its own natural resources here at home. We have sufficient reserves of oil, natural gas and coal for at least two centuries. If the US would simply reduce the inane regulations and massively develop its own carbon based resources (mainly coal WITHOUT CCS for electricity generatrion) for energy and let the rest of the world foolishly rely on extremely expensive and unreliable wind and solar power, we would have an immense competitive advantage. It is the nations switching to “GREEN” energy that are going down the tubes. The Chinese are relying on COAL for their own power and selling GREEN to everyone else since they control the rare metal resources.
Using our roughly 200 year window of cheap and reliable fossil fuel reserves, the US should be investing a few $billion per year in fusion energy research (instead of a few $billion a year in global warming research). Fusion energy is the power of our universe and is what mankind eventually needs to acquire.
Hopefully, our next election will put the US on this road. Those countries that wish to be prosperous will have to follow our lead or end up in poverty. This idea that we have to go GREEN or get left behind is simply inane.
Scientists should be criminally prosecuted for engaging in propaganda. Didnt Hansen chain himself somewhere? The authorities did science a grave injustice by unchaining him.
Hanson and his ilk, Santer, Mann, Jones, etc are not worth wasting words on. [snip – policy]
@fredb:
It is the chief executives of a country who control its diplomatic stances. Canada’s head (PM) has made far more absolute, anti-AGW statements than the US’s head. So it’s untrue that “the US is unique.”
The US as a nation has not “denied the reality of climate change.” Even among Republicans, few dare to go that far. (And of course what deniers deny is not that the climate is changing–you should drop that transparent misdirection when posting here. Rather, they minimize the manmade contribution to it and the potential for runaway positive feedback.) What a faction among Republicans has done is to block cap and trade taxation schemes, and oppose the EPA’s attempts to penalize CO2 emissions.
Sure, the US is no longer playing a leading role in designing mitigation strategies, taxation schemes, new treaties, etc. Neither is China. Is China “losing the edge in the global game of chess”?
Pamela Gray says:
October 11, 2011 at 6:57 am
It takes a tremendous amount of energy to create and maintain blocking highs. We are talking about a pressure system that stays put in the midst of different neighboring pressure systems. These competing systems want to create winds that sweep them away. To stay put is really something. The key to any teleconnections with global warming is to determine what kind of energy is necessary to build and maintain more blocking highs than usual in that region.
The Rossby wave in the polar vortex became locked, the chaotic motion of the fluid flows in the atmosphere is extremely complex (see http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~joel/g110_w08/lecture_notes/midlat_upper/midlat_upper.html ) much is due to the vorticity of the atmosphere and also such things as the effects of a drop in UV leading to more cooling at the poles, the equatorward shifts in the polar jet etc. The effect can lead to a standing wave rather than one that meanders slowly eastward. This ‘locks in’ the weather as the Ferrel cell weather systems follow the stationary path of the jet stream.
Part of the problem, he said, was that the climate sceptic lobby employed communications professionals, whereas “scientists are just barely competent at communicating with the public and don’t have the wherewithal to do it.”
QUE???
Excuse me, Mr. Hansen, but how many millions of dollars did your prime spokesman of AGW, Mr Gore, put in his AGW-publicity campaign? Was it 280 mln? And all governments in their campaigns to raise awareness for this non-issue? A couple of billion?
Tsssss, sore loser. The truth will set you free.
AGW is a hoax and your game is up.
As I understand it there remains an ongoing police investigation into the UEA and /or Hadley, over the climate-gate emails, and in particular into Jones email urging others to delete emails. If the political climate ever permits, then it is not impossible that the Crown Prosecution Service may issue proceedings against Jones. Whether or not encouraging others to delete emails is a breach of the data protection act and whether or not that carries a risk of a jail sentence I do not know. My guess is he will escape prosecution. His effective promotion will have helped send the “right” messages to those authorities that might be interested in investigating the matter.
I am surprised that there seems to be no US prosecutor interest in Santer’s admitted role in the IPCC report, that I have read on the internet that he now says he was encouraged in by Bolin. Perhaps a shift in the political climate in the US might see some judicial interest in the role of various well known climate science individuals, including Santer and Mann.
Perhaps scientific fraud and or misrepresentation of the facts is not a crime on the statute books, no matter what the damage to different countries economies and the lives of their peoples. I think it should be.
Hansen will likely suffer an ignominious retirement, though a wealthy one.
Part of the problem, he said, was that the climate sceptic lobby employed communications professionals, whereas “scientists are just barely competent at communicating with the public and don’t have the wherewithal to do it.”
Facts to prove your case please, Mr. Hansen! Facts please and no mumbo jumbo! Your science was so overwhelmingly obvious and settled. So it should be so easy to win the debate. Just win it Mr. Hansen or admit that you had it all wrong and that CO2 contributes very little to climate change.
The AGW movement is often linked with socialism and left wing politics – but am I alone in seeing the essential fascism it actually embodies? And how Saving the Planet could so easily become the way of wiping out our remaining freedoms with the blessing of most of the people it disenfranchises? Pseudo-Green Fascism is coming!
JJThoms –
Yes, this is EXACTLY the same thing as asking to see all of the data that backs up your models.
Agree with Jeff D above. I can’t help thinking by recent actions that something’s about to hit the fan for the pro-AGWers. Obama had the ideal opportunity to insert global warming into his press conference last Thursday when discussing Solyndra and US energy policy. Nothing! I get the feeling that politicians are putting some distance between themselves and global warming. No hard evidence…just a feeling. Something’s coming down the pipeline and it’s not good for the alarmists.
the climate sceptic lobby employed communications professionals,
=================================================
and the climate alarmist lobby only employs…
movie producers
news papers
magazines
TV movies
Nature specials
blogs
politicians
governments
developing countries
cartoons
editorials
demonstrations
school text books
internet reference sites……………………….
William,
Your comment – that CO2 greenhouse effect is logarithmic such that subsequent increases in CO2 has less and less effect.
– reminded me of something I recalled from my A. Physics course. If I remember correctly, the mechanism by which a GHG works is the absorbtion or excitation of it’s molecule(s) by infrared radiation. Different gases absorb within different parts of this spectrum (incidence as I recall). In covering this part of the science, it was noted that CO2 was near saturation with regard to the bandwidth of spectrum it absorbs at. (This in the mid 1990’s.) CH4 and the CFC’s seemed to be gasses to be of concern. I remember thinking at the time that while the whole CFC – Ozone hole issue may have been over blown, the elimination of CFC’s from the market might potentially prove a good idea if one was concerned about global warming.
What I would like to ask the folks here is why I never see the saturation issue brought up? Was my learning faulty? The closest I’ve seen was the Waterloo paper a year or two ago that noted a correlation between declining CFC concentrations and a flattening of the temperture rise.
An economy-wide tax on carbon dioxide emissions has just passed the Australian House of Representatives in one of the most brazens subversions of Australian democracy by the minority leftwing Greens-Labour government, which promised the exact opposite. The Government now has less than 30% support, and will stagger towards oblivion at the next election, which isn’t due until 2013.
The fact Hansen uses the word, “Winning,” demonstrates his psyche is focused on “sides,” which tends to suggest his focus has been politics and not science.
Science has no “sides.” Everyone is on the same side, (supposedly.) And what side is that?
Truth, pure and simple. No spin.
“We don’t call people on the other side of the debate ugly denigrating names like deniers and flat earthers.”
But that’s not because we’re nicer. We just can’t think of anything rude enough.
I think he and NASA now need each other too much; they’ve both jumped the same shark, and can’t get off.
Tom says:
October 11, 2011 at 4:00 pm
An economy-wide tax on carbon dioxide emissions has just passed the Australian House of Representatives in one of the most brazens subversions of Australian democracy by the minority leftwing Greens-Labour government, which promised the exact opposite. The Government now has less than 30% support, and will stagger towards oblivion at the next election, which isn’t due until 2013.
____________________________________________
Just get the new crop of politicians to sign in blood that they will repeal the law before you vote for them. You might also want to consider the ancient practice of holding their first born hostage to insure they act in good faith.
The distinction is illusory. Fascism is (also) the central control of all industry and all aspects of life by government. I.e., Statism. National Socialism differed only in that it was National in its ambitions, as well (Deutschland Uber Alles). The red of its flag background was chosen quite deliberately to appeal to Bolsheviks.
Hmm. I thought science was about discovery, not a game to be won or lost.
Ryan says:
October 11, 2011 at 4:08 am
20 years of being told the world is about to end due to global warming whilst at the same time we had twenty years of dramatically increased CO2 output but declining temperatures would tend to demonstrate to most reasonable people that global warming theory has already been falsified….
____________________________________________
Do not forget that some of us heard the same mouth pieces screaming about the coming Ice age in the 60’s and 70’s. At least that had a bit of science behind it since we are towards the end of the Holocene interglacial.
Then we got thirty years of “Global Warming” hysteria which has sinced morphed into the catch all “Climate Change”
By this time adrenal exhaustion has set in. If it were not for the greedy politicians and their buddies like Al Gore hanging around like vampires waiting to suck more blood from the rest of the population I would completely ignore the subject.
“By this time adrenal exhaustion has set in.”
Gail, that’s the most accurate description I’ve seen…………..
Michael J Alexander says:
October 11, 2011 at 8:07 am
It’s not a battle dammit… It’s supposed to be science!
_________________________
I am afraid you are wrong. It is a battle. The goal is world wide taxes controlled not by nations but by a “global entity”, global governance and the destruction of “the affluent middle class” Maurice Strong, Father of Global Warming and member of the UN Commission on Global Governance made that very clear when he stated at the opening session of the Rio Conference (Earth Summit II) in 1992.
“It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class—involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing—are not sustainable. A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmentally damaging consumption patterns.”
If it was just about “Global Warming” it would be a heck of a lot less dangerous. Instead it is about the permanent destruction of western civilization.
At the time of Maurice Strong’s First Earth Summit in 1972 heralding the beginning of global warming, Obama’s Science Czar was co-author of a book stating
“The need for de-development presents our economists with a major challenge. They must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is a much more equitable distribution of wealth than in the present one. Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential if a decent life is to be provided for every human being.”
On another occasion, Holdren, when asked whether Americans would “need to reduce their living standards,” said:
“I think ultimately that the rate of growth of material consumption is going to have to come down, and there’s going to have to be a degree of redistribution of how much we consume, in terms of energy and material resources, in order to leave room for people who are poor to become more prosperous.” http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2368
Notice both of these individuals are still very influential today forty years later.
From the very start in 1972 BEFORE we saw any warming the plan was in place. It has NEVER EVER been about science, it has always been about politics and at the time they KNEW we were due for 30 years of warming!
How can I say this? Because Gleissberg had published in 1939 & in 1971 and identified an 88 yr cycle in the weather patterns. http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003/2002JA009390.shtml
kelly liddle says:
Not winning in Australia. Carbon (dioxide) Tax expected to pass parliament tomorrow.
And making inevitable the defeat of the Gillard government.
Don’t underestimate Hansen.
What he did is playing rhetoric tricks of denotatum and connotation to gain
self-enhancement. It’s only a clever move to strengthen his position and to
keep a backdoor open for all other cases.
In this speech he threw a boomerang on skeptics.
You can wait for it… there’s still more to come from him.
This man can not be trusted… in no way ever.
He would sell his own grandmother to keep his position.
Well, duh! That’s all Hansen deserves.
#1. We don’t rewrite history either, by censoring postings that simply are trying to ask questions, like Real Climate does.
Maurice Strong, 1992. “It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class—are not sustainable.
Note that Strong takes issue with the lifestyles of the “affluent middle class”. Nowhere does he take issue with the lifestyles of the “affluent upper class”.
This is an important point. It is you lifestyle and your continued existence that are the target.
Read what Hansen, Gore, Strong are really saying. Listen to what they are afraid of. What they fear is that you the middle classes are using the resources of the earth, spoiling the earth so they, the rich can’t enjoy it. They are afraid of you and what you represent.
They want the resources preserved for their use, the “affluent upper class”. The “affluent middle class” be damned, and if one looks at the economy that is pretty much what is happening.
Breckite says:
October 11, 2011 at 5:20 pm
Hmm. I thought science was about discovery, not a game to be won or lost.
Good point. Hansen is counting how many people believe in warming or are skeptical, and using this as a measure of success. Nothing to do with scientific discovery.
True science doesn’t concern itself with how many people believe. Belief doesn’t make something true of false, thus it should not be part of the process. The fact that belief is part of the peer review process strongly suggests that peer review is broken.
Roy says:
October 11, 2011 at 4:26 am
This posting led me to look at the GISS personnel directory and Dr. Hansen’s entry in particular. I am puzzled as to what this phrase means, “The hardest part is trying to influence the nature of the measurements obtained, so that the key information can be obtained.”
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In a butcher shop that would be known as “having your finger on the scale”.
I would bet good money that you were watching The History Channel. That sounds like their typical disaster marathon. It’s hard to tell these days, what with Sy Fy and their endless ghost nonsense and sometimes even wrestling. But then again we cannot rule out NatGeo and Discovery or even the NBC corrupted TWC Weather Channel as well. The question remains as to why anyone would think that airing AGW propaganda on any of these cable channels actually helps their cause.
I hope everyone takes note of this intellectually challenged AGW sycophant. Just imagine the tangled neurons responsible for this person’s straight-faced ability to ‘morally’ conflate Anthony’s private website owned by him with those of public institutions involving professional scientists whose data products are owned by taxpayers. This is what we are up against folks. The AGW cultists are absolutely divorced from reality itself, let alone the Scientific Method, so how can Science be discussed at all?
BTW, which retread troll are you JJThoms? Why don’t you come clean and tell us your previous handle before you get nailed again. Honesty is the best policy.
ferd berple says:
October 11, 2011 at 11:20 pm
Maurice Strong, 1992. “It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class—are not sustainable.
Note that Strong takes issue with the lifestyles of the “affluent middle class”. Nowhere does he take issue with the lifestyles of the “affluent upper class”…..
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Bingo. You have it. The aim is a return to the middle ages with a class of serfs and a class of aristocrats. They do not want to pull the third world out of poverty , they want to return the middle class TO poverty.
As you said that is exactly what has been done. for example: http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html“>The ratio of CEO pay to factory worker pay rose from 42:1 in 1960 to as high as 531:1 in 2000
“Of all the new financial wealth created by the American economy in that 21-year-period, fully 42% of it went to the top 1%. A whopping 94% went to the top 20%, which of course means that the bottom 80% received only 6% of all the new financial wealth generated in the United States during the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s (Wolff, 2007).
we can still safely say that the top 10% of the world’s adults control about 85% of global household wealth — defined very broadly as all assets (not just financial assets), minus debts….. “
What Strong (a billionaire) and the rest want to do is take the other 15% of the wealth….
The other part of CAGW is “sustainability” which is the code word for the UN Agenda 21″ This is the plan that John Holdren’s economists came up with.
It is interesting to note that Agenda 21 is in a Climategate e-mail Global Governance & Sustainable Development (B1)
Here is more on the (B1) scenario IPCC Emissions Scenarios
Here is who Ged Davis is (Shell Oil executive with IPCC connection)
And then there is the Royal Dutch Shell Oil connections. Shell is one of the founders of CRU. The Royal Dutch family owns something like 25%. Then there is
Prince Bernhard and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and how it was originally http://www.ogiek.org/indepth/whit-man-game-wwf.htm“>funded It is all a bit incestuous but the young political activists like Occupy Wallstreet never bother to trace the connections and realize that those they are protesting against are the ones pulling their strings.
Hansen, Jones, Mann, Strong and Holdren are just the well paid front men. The real movers and shakers are in the shadows behind them and we do well never to forget that.
Communication, Jim?
A rose by any other name is still a ‘rose’…..A lie by any other name……….
Hansen shows why scientists are no better suited for creating and influencing public policy than anybody else. He is no longer performing science but performing advocacy.
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JJThoms,
Anthony is correct.
John
Gail Combs says:
October 12, 2011 at 4:51 am
“It is interesting to note that Agenda 21 is in a Climategate e-mail Global Governance & Sustainable Development (B1)
Here is more on the (B1) scenario IPCC Emissions Scenarios
Here is who Ged Davis is (Shell Oil executive with IPCC connection)”
Very interesting. Your mail link didn’t work. Here’s the same mail from somewhere else:
http://www.au.agwscam.com/cru/emails.php?eid=54
B1 scenario, excerpts:
“Active management of
income distribution is undertaken through use of taxes and subsidies.”
“Governance
systems reflect high levels of consent from those affected by decisions,
and this consent arises out of active participation in the governance process.”
So we’ll all be equal and love our masters because they give us the feeling that we can participate. Schellnhuber has written about this in his Great Transformation pamphlet; he warns that with all that participation, care must be taken that in the end the right decisions are the result…
http://notrickszone.com/2011/10/11/german-faz-schellnhubers-wbgu-has-strange-ideas-when-it-comes-to-democracy-compares-proposed-great-transformation-to-bolschevik-revolution/
Gail Combs says:
October 11, 2011 at 6:27 pm
“From the very start in 1972 BEFORE we saw any warming the plan was in place. It has NEVER EVER been about science, it has always been about politics and at the time they KNEW we were due for 30 years of warming!”
h/t polistra:
1975 `Endangered Atmosphere’
Conference: Where the Global Warming Hoax Was Born
Mead, Schneider, Holdren and Lovelock
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/highlights/Fall_2007.html
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202007/GWHoaxBorn.pdf
jeff d:
Quite possibly there is a scandle in the background in the money stream that’s slowly working its way to the surface of the pond.
C
Global warming killed my snowman army last spring- you missed that as a reason why the realists are winning. With that snowman army, I could have taken over the world and then made you all drive underpowered small cars that don’t fit a family in them and heat your homes with smelly logs and manure from gassy cows.
Hang on, if you all recall “live Earth” where the profits raised went to the Alliance for Climate Protection.
Who are nothing but a green PR company:
The Alliance is a new organization engaged in an unprecedented public education campaign on both the urgency and the solvability of the climate crisis. Building on the momentum of “An Inconvenient Truth,” their objective is to persuade individuals, communities, states, and corporations across the world to begin to quickly reduce their own greenhouse pollution in order to become “carbon neutral.” Furthermore, The Alliance is working to move the USA past a tipping point, beyond which political and business leaders and all sectors of civil society compete to offer policies and programs that will sharply reduce emissions.
I am currently taking a course on “global warming” and entered the course accepting the “fact” that the earth has warmed over the past 100-150 years. The more I have read about weather stations the more I believe nothing of the kind. Some of the data collected in the U.S. was the result of efforts by the Smithsonian. They gave out thermometers, barometers, etc. to volunteers in 1849. Originally the volunteers were to take readings at sunrise, 9 am, 3 pm and 9 pm. Then in 1853 they changed when the readings were taken to 7 am, 2 pm and 9 pm. In 1883 there were time zones created. This changed when these readings were taken. Who knows where these volunteers placed their thermometers. Were there human errors in reading, were they placed on or near buildings, in sun or shade, etc. Did they hold up kerosene lamps near the thermometers to read them at night? If a classroom of 30 students were all given thermometers and asked to do readings at all these times for a period of 30 days would we trust the data without question? People may have entered data on the logs but they also had real lives. Did they miss a day of readings because of a death in their families? Did they have a bit too much to drink occasionally? Did they sleep in and miss the sunrise reading for a few days? How also can you compare thermometer readings read from different angles by different people? On days missed did some of the volunteers just fill in the gaps with what they thought it would have said? This would very likely happen in the classroom scenario if a grade depended on submitting this data to a teacher. The types of thermometers have changed. How can respected scientists even remotely consider any of this pure data? A reading from older thermometers read by humans in 1849 cannot be compared to data transmitted digitally from boxes today with totally different thermometers. How can anyone know that the scales were all consistent? With equipment constantly being improved how can anyone consider it good science to take newer data and compare it to data gathered in the horse and buggy era. The past climate history is pieced together with core samples and tree rings and is all basically speculation since no one was there. Temperature readings may also have started being taken in what was a rural area then it grew into a city with different surfaces. The future predictions about warming are also speculation since no one knows 100% what will happen tomorrow. If we did we wouldn’t have to read a thermometer at all. How can this science and their conclusions ever be trusted when there will never be any consistency of equipment used.