Ross McKittrick writes in with this:
A bracing essay at Pointman’s. I particularly like this bit:
The problem the alarmists had, was that there was never anything substantial to hit back at. They had the equivalents of the big guns and the massive air support but there never was a skeptic HQ to be pounded, no big central organization, no massed ranks of skeptic soldiers or even any third-party backing the resistance.
Every one of the skeptics was a lone volunteer guerrilla fighter, who needed absolutely no logistical support of any kind to continue the fight indefinitely. The alarmists never understood this, preferring to think that there simply had to be some massive hidden organization orchestrating the resistance. While they wasted time and effort attacking targets that only existed in their head, each of the guerrillas chewed on them mercilessly in their own particular way.
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/the-climate-wars/
Alarmists missing targets? Butt I thought they wuz Texas sharpshooters 😉
“Damn, a perfectly innocent and elegant Hypothesis ruthlessly murdered by an unruly mob of facts”.
Paraphrased from memory by this poster. Original source unknown at this time by this poster.
Cheers, Kevin, (just one of those “merciless chewers”)
Reblogged this on Truth, Lies and In Between and commented:
All over it.
Just learned of this brand new release:
Wilson, I.R.G. (2012). Lunar tides and the long-term variation of the peak latitude anomaly of the summer sub-tropical high pressure ridge over Eastern Australia. The Open Atmospheric Science Journal 6, 49-60.
http://www.benthamscience.com/open/toascj/articles/V006/49TOASCJ.pdf
Will read when time permits.
Kudos to all the climate skeptic guerillas found here on WUWT!
Skeptical & proud of it!
Climate Minuteman has been offered, but if speaking of Steve McIntyre he’s the original Climate Minutiaman soldier.
tarpon says:
March 2, 2012 at 4:14 pm
What, and admit defeat? Won’t happen! Not in a thousand years. Not in a million years! Not even if another Ice Age beg…..
Nevermind.
Don’t try to take too much credit, guys!
Nature is having her very big say in all of this. She is refusing to co-operate almost totally with the warmists.
It could have been and would have been very different if there had been another big solar cycle underway right now or the PDO had not changed or the man made GFC had not come along and suddenly made the citizenery and the politicals realise that their wallets were getting very thin and they must cut back on those societal luxuries that the climate elite were forever demanding and for which they had been well humoured in the past .
All the chest beating in the world won’t alter the fact that it is a capricious and unpredictable , Nature that has turned the tide on the warmist zealots.
All the skeptics have done is to proclaim this to the world and the world is now at last,slowly starting to listen and wonder and question what the ruckus was all about and ask; why should we suffer and pay for something which the skeptics now tell us, isn’t even happening and never was.
MarkW says:
March 2, 2012 at 3:19 pm
To succeed, a guerilla movement needs the support of the local population. That’s why the surge in Iraq worked. Once the locals no longer feared the terrorists, they were willing to work with the Allied forces to point out the terrorists.
___________________________
That explains why Greens are so successful. I’d say they even have more ‘local population’ support than climate skeptics have. Just compare:
Greens: let’s save the nature, it will cost you just a little
Skeptics: let’s stop wasting money on Green nonsense, we need money to improve our own lives
People are only slowly starting to realize that the ‘it will cost you just a little’ is a big fat lie. But apart of that, people always think that saving themselves is inferior to saving something else.
Part of ‘know your enemy’ is also ‘don’t underestimate your enemy’. Green movement is pretty much the same guerilla as climate skepticism (or realism, or whatever you like). Actually it was here sooner, skepticism would never need to raise if Greens weren’t so successful.
We come here and and other blogs to – share, read, have fun, learn, test, enjoy a debate, challenge and share some more.
Meanwhile onlookers and acquaintances are being told and so we grow. We are not at all like a single entity, we are many, we are efficient, we are growing, and we will win.
Pat Frank says: March 2, 2012 at 6:18 pm
… HQ, big organization, massed ranks, third party backers, (scads of money, cynical serial liars) …
In other words, their mistake was that they thought we are like them.
Indeed. And too much stuck in the bunkers to check.
The science is unequivocally on the side of the skeptics. The planet’s feedback response to a change in temperature forcing (any forcing change) is to resist the forcing change (negative feedback) rather than positive (amplify forcing change). The planet’s atmosphere resists forcing changes (negative feedback) by an increase or decrease in planetary clouds particularly in the tropics which increases or decreases the amount of sunlight that is reflected into space.
Analysis of top of the atmosphere radiation changes Vs temperature changes clearly indicates that planet’s response to a change in forcing is negative. Actual measured warming is significantly less than that predicted by the IPCC. There has been no net warming for the last 10 years.
If the planet’s response to a change in forcing is negative (resist changes by increasing or decreasing clouds particularly in the tropics) the amount of warming due to a doubling of CO2 be less than 1C with most of the warming occurring at high latitudes which will cause the biosphere to expand. The warming due to atmospheric CO2 increases is positive, it will cause the biosphere to expand.
Carbon dioxide is not a poison. Plants eat CO2. Plant yield increases and growing times decrease when atmospheric CO2 is increased. Commercial greenhouses inject CO2 into the greenhouse to increase yield and decrease growing times. A doubling of atmospheric CO2 will result in an increase in cereal crop yields of roughly 30% to 40%.
When atmospheric CO2 increases plants reduce the number of stomata on their leaves which reduces the amount of water they lose to evaporation. When the atmospheric CO2 increases plants can make more effective use of water. (Another benefit due to increasing atmospheric CO2 levels.)
http://www.advancegreenhouses.com/use_of_co2_in_a_greenhouse.htm
Carbon dioxide is one of the essential ingredients in green plant growth and is a primary environmental factor in greenhouses. CO2 enrichment at 2, 3 or four times natural concentration will cause plants to grow faster and improve plant will quality.
Carbon dioxide is an odorless gas and a minor constituent in the air we breathe. It comprises only .03% [ 300 parts per million, or PPM] of the atmosphere, but is virtually important to all life on this planet!
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/05/030509084556.htm
Greenhouse Gas Might Green Up The Desert; Weizmann Institute Study Suggests That Rising Carbon Dioxide Levels Might Cause Forests To Spread Into Dry Environments
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090731-green-sahara.html
The green shoots of recovery are showing up on satellite images of regions including the Sahel, a semi-desert zone bordering the Sahara to the south that stretches some 2,400 miles (3,860 kilometers). Images taken between 1982 and 2002 revealed extensive regreening throughout the Sahel, according to a new study in the journal Biogeosciences.
My first thought about Pointman’s essay, is how churlish it is to ignore the contribution of Megan McArdle. She is on the ‘other side’ in his romanticizing military metaphor, but as best as I can tell she did more than any other individual to expose the forgery.
The next disappointment is more than sixty comments without anyone making this point.
The science is overwhelming on the side of the skeptics.
The extreme AGW paradigm promoters spend all of their effort fabricating and pushing a CO2 catastrophe. It is truly astonishing that they appear to be obvious to the science and fundamental economics.
The cost of what is being proposed will bankrupt Western countries and will have no significant effect on reducing CO2 rise – which is not a problem anyway. In addition to bankrupting Western Countries the same proposed programs will detrimentally effect the environment. It is difficult to understand why logic and reason is absent from the extreme AGW movement policy formation.
This link provides a useful summary of the skeptics feedback case.
http://mises.org/daily/5892/The-Skeptics-Case#.T0eUhlmYO74.email
The skeptics also need to remind the extreme AGW paradigm’s CO2 haters, that CO2 is not a poison. Plants eat CO2 and thrive when CO2 is increased. Commercial greenhouse inject CO2 to increase yield.
http://www.uiweb.uidaho.edu/bioenergy/NewsReleases/Biodiesel%20Energy%20Balance_v2a.pdf
Vast amounts of agricultural land are being diverted from crops for human consumption to biofuel The immediate consequence of this is a dramatic increase in the cost of basic food such as a 140% increase in the price of corn. Due to limited amounts of agricultural land vast regions of virgin forest are being cut down for biofuel production. The problems associate with this practice will become acute as all major Western governments have mandate a percentage of biofuel.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725975,00.html
The Clean Energy Scam
The U.S. quintupled its production of ethanol–ethyl alcohol, a fuel distilled from plant matter–in the past decade, and Washington has just mandated another fivefold increase in renewable fuels over the next decade. Europe has similarly aggressive biofuel mandates and subsidies, and Brazil’s filling stations no longer even offer plain gasoline. Worldwide investment in biofuels rose from $5 billion in 1995 to $38 billion in 2005 and is expected to top $100 billion by 2010, thanks to investors like Richard Branson and George Soros, GE and BP, Ford and Shell, Cargill and the Carlyle Group.
But several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it’s dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline. Meanwhile, by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves. The U.N.’s World Food Program says it needs $500 million in additional funding and supplies, calling the rising costs for food nothing less than a global emergency. Soaring corn prices have sparked tortilla riots in Mexico City, and skyrocketing flour prices have destabilized Pakistan, which wasn’t exactly tranquil when flour was affordable.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-04-14/biofuel-production-a-crime-against-humanity/2403402
Biofuels ‘crime against humanity’
Massive production of biofuels is “a crime against humanity” because of its impact on global food prices, a UN official has told German radio. “Producing biofuels today is a crime against humanity,” UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food Jean Ziegler told Bayerischer Runfunk radio. Many observers have warned that using arable land to produce crops for biofuels has reduced surfaces available to grow food. Mr Ziegler called on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to change its policies on agricultural
Reposting from Pointman’s blog
Thanks Pointman even if I tend to agree with the comparison to el Alamein. Well, my part is probably close to Intelligence – nearly all of which was done of course behind the scenes, but led to such things as the “heroes of Telemark” who took out the heavy-water plant at Rjukan, and no doubt a great deal more if I were to inform myself of the now-available details.
Two more heroes inspire me. Both became, in time, great kings.
One is David. Not just against Goliath, but subsequently. Few realize that Saul became so jealous of David that for several years he was on the run and in hiding, even though he’d been anointed king… that’s what the Psalms are about, and that’s why they ricochet from despair to hope all the time.
The other inspiration is our king Alfred rightly called the Great. He too was in hiding and on the run. I still choke in the throat when I recall his astounding story. He is my inspiration for the wiki I am still preparing behind the scenes (anyone interested in helping, please email me). He knew it was necessary to rebuild strategically. It was not enough to ambush
W M CGuthrum the Dane, not enough to babysitwarmistsGuthrum through conversion totrue scienceChristianity. It was necessary to rebuild, strategically. Our UK counties originate from this time. Each county established a fortified county town from which no part in the shire was more than a day’s ride distant.Someone in comments over at Richard Black’s blog told him that they can’t win because they are engaged in guerrilla warfare. They have indeed convinced themselves that their failure must be due to a [non-existent] well funded, ‘climate change’ denialist machine. A spark of truth can defeat a mountain of lies [Gleick et. al].
Never in the history of the world has any movement received so much financing, so much political support, media backing and failed so miserably as the global warming movement.
Warmists, please pay attention to Pointman’s great observation about Fakegate:
Don’t mind him though, keep shooting in the dark. ;>)
ABC radio National on Aus today had R williams supporting Gleick.
and that mob who he isnt working for..doing agit prop in schools
to fight us uninformed??? sceptics
and proposals for censorship of most comms inc personal blogs.
Not until school education fairly presents scepticism could can any sense of victory be considered.
http://www.gcse.com/energy/climate_change.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/geography/climate_change/describing_climatic_trends_rev1.shtml
GCSEs are the UK qualifications for 15/16 year olds.
The CO2 climate driver connection favored by the IPCC is like a blown fuse in a fuse box. It isn’t working.
With that stated though, there is a direct connection, proven by chemistry, to the lowering of PH in the oceans. This IS a very valid concern that should have everyone concerned.
The Climate Wars. Posted by Pointman on March 2, 2012
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/the-climate-wars/
Excerpt:
I have fought the evil anti-human thing that environmentalism metastasised into for many years. I’ve seen good people I had a regard for smashed into the ground by it, because in all innocence, they simply couldn’t help but voice their honest concerns about the simple accuracy of the science or the logical implications of its policies, both for humanity in general and the most vulnerable people on the planet in particular.
Those people were too civilised and decent to understand what they were dealing with; raw naked brutality, so they were destroyed by it. They lost tenure, they lost jobs and they lost that inner optimism that every true scientist still retains in their silly, secret, heart of hearts, about some innate goodness or at least some basic objectivity that they always believed was at the centre of science. What they could never understand was that scientific integrity was irrelevant, it was always about politics, power and money.
They were casualties of war and shouldn’t be forgotten, though they have been. Perhaps in the decades to come, someone will tell their stories. They were good people and deserve that.
[End of excerpt]
I have friends who have given up the fight, brutalized by vicious attacks on their careers, themselves and their families. Thank you Pointman, for remembering them. – Allan
________________________________
Excerpt:
I think the tide finally started to turn about six months before Climategate I and the Copenhagen debacle. Since then, for a number of reasons and following the various “gates”, it’s all been downhill for the alarmists. I gave my thoughts on why it happened in this piece here but the sheer speed of the movement’s implosion has caught everyone by surprise, including me.
[End of excerpt]
This statement reminds me of the sudden fall of the Berlin Wall in early November 1989.
Five of us were on a multi-week trip to West Germany in July 1989, when at the last minute we were asked to also travel to East Germany for a long weekend to meet with industry representatives there. One of our group refused on conscientious grounds, and we met him later in Cologne. The rest of us saw a piece of history – the last days of the repressive East German Honecker regime.
We arrived at Tegel Airport in West Berlin on a Friday night, and were met by an East German Stasi driver in a VW minibus. We were driven through West Berlin, alive with bright lights and partying crowds, and entered East Berlin at Checkpoint Charlie just before dusk. A sharp left turn and there was the Brandenburg Gate to our left; a right turn onto Unter den Linden, and to our left was the Reichstag. I raised my camera to take a picture and our driver screeched to a halt – this seemed a dangerous move and I braced in case our vehicle was rear-ended – just then that I realized ours was the only vehicle on the street, and there were no pedestrians. The contrast with the vibrant energy of West Berlin was startling – the sun was not just setting physically, it seemed to have suddenly vanished spiritually as well. Where the hell was everyone?
We arrived at our hotel, the Metropole, and later had dinner with our hosts. I was admonished over dinner conversation that “we do not jog in East Berlin”. I asked if I could go for a walk, and was told ”You can walk anywhere in East Berlin. You will be perfectly safe. Not like your New York and Los Angeles.” We went for a stroll after dinner and understood the comment – in every block there were eight police guardposts, each about the size of a bus shelter, encased in dark glass, to prevent East Germans from trying to defect through the nearby Western Embassies.
We walked past a storm sewer grate and the smell almost knocked me down – I realized then that the East Germans did not treat their sanitary sewage – they merged it with their storm runoff and dumped it into the rivers – yuck!
In the next two days we travelled though the city and countryside, visited an operating mine and had lengthy meetings in a very hot room with our counterparts. I was generally impressed with the professionalism of our hosts and particularly our interpreter, who had a remarkable memory.
I was totally unimpressed with everything else in East Germany – the people were terrified of authority and particularly of any unauthorized contact with us Westerners, clearly identifiable by our clothing – the newer buildings has rivers of rust running down their facades, probably because re-bar had not been properly buried in the concrete and was corroding dangerously – the mechanical and electrical systems were WW2 vintage, and the electronics were decades behind ours. East Germans were well-fed, but lived frightened, grey lives behind the barbed wire of the Wall.
We were fed up with the East and left a day early without our Stasi driver, made our way to Checkpoint Charlie and were allowed to leave after a rather thorough checkout process. We walked around West Berlin, and saw a memorial to those who had been killed trying to escape from East Berlin. Officially 136 people were killed trying to escape across the Wall, and hundreds more were wounded. The last person to be shot and killed trying to escape was Chris Gueffroy, on February 6, 1989. He was shot ten times in the chest and died between the wire fences. Chris Gueffroy was twenty years old.
Later, our West German industrial hosts quizzed us at length about what we saw – most had never been into the East. I described the fear I saw in the eyes of East German people, and the terrible state of their physical plant – the buildings, mechanical and electrical systems, highways, railways and the lack of sewage treatment. I ventured that given the political situation, the East German regime could not last, but I was thinking it would take five to ten years for the Wall to fall. It took 4 months.
Maybe that is the real “tipping point” that the global warmists are so worried about. There is a point when they will just drown in cesspools of their own BS. Let us hope that day is soon.
Denouement
A few years later, I returned to Berlin with two colleagues. We walked from the West toward the Brandenburg Gate, and although I no longer jogged due to cratered knees, I asked my friends if they would excuse me for a few minutes. I broke into a slow painful jog, passed under the Brandenburg Gate and ran a short distance down Unter Den Linden into former East Berlin. A curious sight for passing motorists, no doubt, but a small triumph for those of us who remember the dark days of East Germany.
Allan:
You gave the system 5 to 10 years to collapse, because ist was bound to collapse…..
Now its the turn of the Warmist cause: another 5 – 10 years?
But: as you pointed out: Historical progress often self-accelerates and the system
collapsed very much earlier…….
I bet this self-acceleration mechanism will also apply to the Warmists….
Lets observe for 2-3 years and you will see the difference
JS
So Gleick was trying to find out who was supplying alms to guerillas ?
Great essay. Who is Pointman???
Yes, Ross is spot on…… However the Socialists and ecofascists have now understood their mistake and are right now setting about rectifying that very oversight, specially here in Australia. Right now we have a media enquiry underway by our Socialist Labor Government in which an activist judge and an embittered ex newspaper editor are in charge of….and suprise, suprise, they have a raft of sweeping “reforms” to give to the government…… Also I have noted in the mainstream media recently, a slowly growing and unhealthy emphasis on curbing “cyber bullying” and clamping down on “hate” speech or “offensive” speech by bloggers and posters….. The move is on to take away the freedom of the internet, they are desperately trying to isolate our concerned and vocal multitudes.
We are now in desperate times…… The thing with reality is that unlike the movies, there is no swelling music to cue the serious parts….. One must have the insight to see impending disaster before it strikes. With Socialist governments like Australia’s Labor party or Obama’s presidency only twelve months from the likelihood of being overthrown, they will be stung to extremism to hang on to power. The long standing Socialist bureaucracies that lie hidden and dormant between conservative status quo governments know that there is a purge coming this time around and they will do anything to stop it.
Above [ http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/02/quote-of-the-week-alarmists-missing-targets/#comment-911234 ] I referenced a new paper.
Note that it’s currently being featured in the following blog articles:
The Moons influence on the atmosphere over Australia
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/03/the-moons-influence-on-the-australian-climate/
The Moon and Rainfall in Eastern Australia
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2012/03/the-moon-and-rainfall-in-eastern-australia/
Best Regards.