I had planned to write about this, and specifically that Joe Romm’s blog “Climate Progress” appears to have died a quiet death of assimilation by the borg greens, saying:
We are now merging with ThinkProgress Green, and that means we’ll be adding two new regular bloggers, Jessica Goad, manager of research and outreach for CAP’s Public Lands Project, and Rebecca Leber, a ThinkProgress blogger and research assistant. They join Stephen, me, and all the regular Climate Progress contributors from the CAP energy team and blogging news room.
But Tom Fuller beat me to it in a guest post over at Jeff Condon’s place called Bookends and Separations. The assimilation of Climate Progress (which once had its own domain name) is just a symptom of a larger trend, and such assimilation must be a bitter pill for “Hero of the Environment″ Romm to swallow, as Fuller writes:
But people have pretty much stopped listening. They’ve even stopped writing. Joe Romm has folded his Climate Progress blog into the rubric of Think Progress’ larger efforts and now interns do much of his writing for him. Deltoid is down to one post a month, and it’s an open thread. Michael Tobis has fled Only In It For The Gold and is now writing at Planet 3–and complaining about a lack of traffic.
In a Republican primary with nine initial contestants, the amount of conversation about climate change was effectively zero. Over on the other side of the aisle, President Obama has almost abandoned the issue. The IPCC’s upcoming AR5 is, by all appearances, going to be much more subdued in its claims and much more reasonable as a result.
…
And this is the way it should be.
It’s the way it should be because climate change will return as an issue. Especially in America, where we love a second act to every story, anthropogenic climate change will return. Temperatures have plateaued at a high level and may even dip during this decade due to the muting effect of several natural cycles. But those cycles will end. And a new generation of scientists is readying itself to take up the argument again, untainted by the past disasters and mistakes of those currently sagging against the ropes.
The next generation of discussion may be calmer and more grounded in facts–looking at all the things humans do to influence climate and not just the CO2 we emit. It may not.
Read the whole post: Bookends and Separations.
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Meanwhile, WUWT traffic remains strong:
A lower number is better, for example Google is #1. Note the traffic blip on Feb 14th of Peter Gleick’s “Fakegate” didn’t last for DeSmog blog, as I’ve previously reported. My competition can’t seem to get out of the >100,000 “we don’t bother to track them” zone. You can run your own comparisons here.
I can’t compare Climate Progress or Deltoid, since they are subdomains of larger blogging aggregators, but before CP lost its domain name we were beating the pants off it traffic rank wise. With one post a month, Deltoid can’t have much in the way of traffic.
UPDATE: in related news, the Orange County Register seems to agree (h/t to Climate Depot)
Global warming alarmism becoming much less alarming: ‘Maybe it’s the Cry Wolf syndrome. Maybe it’s just taking notice of reality. Maybe it’s only a fad that’s run its course’
On a related note.
Many of you have written to me expressing concern for Steve McIntyre because he hasn’t posted anything since March 20th. I called him Friday and spoke with his wife. He’s fine, but engaged in a work project outside of blogging and is focusing on it. I can’t say that I blame him. Blogging, especially climate blogging with so many technical details, is a huge time sink. My own business has suffered due to WUWT and I know Steve’s has. Where’s those big oil checks when we need it most?
Smokey says: @ur momisugly April 14, 2012 at 6:13 pm
“Anyway, the warmist crowd helps the numbers: more than 111 million unique hits, and counting. Also approaching a million reader comments; a more interesting metric. Maybe those Big Oil checks will start flowing after all.☺”
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I Doubt it Smokey, since BIG OIL is funding the other side. I have always thought the paltry amount Exxon gave Heartland was so the warmists would have something to point to.
The Rockefellers are still part of Exxon but no longer in control.
Ain’t follow the money fun? And here we though they were supporting CAGW out of the goodness of their hearts and not as a money making scam.
No, this is quote of the week …
Genuine statement through current NASA employee …
“My son is a nuclear physicist with NASA and knows GHG theory is bogus and NASA distorts AGW data. BHO won’t allow Civil Servants to express skepticism. James Hanson is actual spokesman for NASA on GHG theory, picked by Al Gore and BHO”
This was said by a father to a contact I have who spoke personally with that father on April 13th.
@DirkH
Sorry, but calling me “extreme left” just proved my point 😉 See the link to the Political Compass. A recent study done on Swedish Pirate Party members place them squarely on the libertarian half, but all over the left-right one (myself I’m smack in the middle). The notion that all politics can be divided up into “left” and “right” is a faulty one, and the rhetoric about “liberals” I sometimes see here on WUWT doesn’t do its international readership any good. Many of us just don’t see a difference between D and R 😉
(I don’t want this to become a thread about politics. My point was that we should be able to talk about CAGW _without_ referring to US-specific left/right notions)
Troed Sångberg says …April 15, 2012 at 4:49 am:
“I’m Swedish. If you want my opinion on US politics you have two parties to the extreme right,”
***
Like you, I’ve been a daily reader here for years.
And apparently like you, I also have little use for the mindless “party think” we see from our US politcal animals, including media and a few too many voters … whether donkeys or elephants. Thus, independence of mind is vital when voting.
Unlike you, however, my opinion on US politics is that neither of our two parties lean right, much less “extreme right”. But then, that’s where your perspective – from afar – is of interest.
Many thanks for your refresh perspectives. Let’s hear some more.
James Lovelock :I think the sceptic bloggers should worry. It’s almost certain that you can’t put a trillion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere without something nasty happening. This is going to resolve itself and global heating is going to come back on stream and it’s these bloggers who are going to be made to look weird when it does.
More: http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/james-lovelock-perspectives-on-climate-science-and-the-blogosphere/
I respect James Lovelock as a great scientist and philosopher but that doesn’t mean that he is always correct in each of his pronouncements.
“What a maroon!” — http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/52/messages/630.html (Runyan-eqsue humor from B. Bunny.
It never fails but that libtard attempts to hold a public communication, radio, blogs, etc., always tend to topple into oblivion if they are based around something that can be fact checked or openly debated.
More evidence that the warmists opinion mongers are funded by the big money Soros types. They can’t stand up on their own. This funding is a concerted effort to impose Agenda 21 tyranny on the world. They no longer see a need for billions of people on this earth and are working to shrink that problem. Look it up.
Troed Sångberg says:
I’m Swedish. If you want my opinion on US politics you have two parties to the extreme right, with only minor differences to quibble about. We don’t see the same “conservatives against CAGW, liberals pro” as you do.
I think Troed’s viewpoint is based on a worldview that concedes that the politics of CAGW are correct and only the science of CAGW is at issue.
There was never any science behind CAGW once you got past the “just so” story (see Kipling) of “CO2 is a greenhouse gas, CO2 is increasing, temps are increasing, ergo CO2 caused the warming and it will continue until we all die” meme.
Many Americans and Brits (based on reading their blogs) tend to see CAGW as a political issue as much as a scientific issue. This is my view (although I don’t think Anthony or Steve M or most anti-CAGW bloggers approach it that way, perhaps wisely).
People like Anthony have won the scientific argument, amazingly enough, since he and his ilk are tiny Davids against all the power of the governmental and academic (same thing) science establishment.
However, I fear that that victory has done little or nothing to slow the progress of the cause of environmental socialism. Yes, constant repetition of “the end is near” from the CAGW establishment helped the sheeple accept (and even love) their new environmentalist masters but even though their “facts” are shown to be false, their goals have not changed and their plan to use CAGW to advance a socialist world governement that would eliminate personal and economic freedom (really, the same thing) is still ongoing (albeit in a quieter manner).
Since the CAGW campaign was never based on real science it cannot be defeated by showing that the science is faulty.
CAGW was, and still is, a political movement determined to turn power over to technocrats since “free markets are evil and are destroying the world.” The goal is to produce a “new environmental man” since the socialists failed to produce the “new socialist man” so spectacularly.
I think it is necessary to discredit the pseudo science of CAGW but it is not sufficient to elimate the threat that it is used to justify. The real issue is whether personal freedom (and the resulting free market) is too dangerous to allow. Must we, for our own good, be ruled by our “superiors” who will lead us back to a golden age where each gives according to their ability and takes according to their need or can the common man be allowed the freedom to make their own economic choices?
Troed Sångberg says:
April 15, 2012 at 6:42 am
“@DirkH
Sorry, but calling me “extreme left” just proved my point ;)”
You called the US parties extreme right, so obviously, relative to them, you are extreme left. Otherwise, they could not be to the extreme right from you. Simple logic.
“I don’t want this to become a thread about politics.”
I have no problem with it. A serious question. Is there ANY OFFICIAL statement from ANY of the global pirate parties about what economic policy they would desire?
Since arriving at this blog some while ago I have found it the best source of climate/weather science and information. Anthony is clearly a decent, honest and fair man. He has made changes to his lifestyle out of a genuine and realistic concern for the environment and energy
conservation which I doubt many of his critics could match. He has achieved tremendous success despite having an 85% sensory-neural hearing loss since his early teens.
Anthony has a business providing weather stations and custom weather monitoring solutions. Anyone interested in buying anything to do with the weather/climate should support Anthony and visit the Weather Shop:
http://www.weathershop.com/
WUWT readers can also, of course, donate to the very exciting Surfacestations.org project:
http://www.surfacestations.org/donate.htm
http://www.surfacestations.org/
In addition to Anthony there is a dedicated team of contributors and moderators who deserve our thanks and respect for all the very hard work that goes into this blog.
I believe that scientists must not be ashamed of finding that a hypothesis or theory is wrong; it prevents others from travelling down the wrong road and so helps scientific progress. Their work is just as important as the work of those who develop a new theory which appears to agree with experiment and observation but which may in time also be proved wrong by others.
To paraphrase Kipling:
If you can make one heap of all your findings
And risk it on experiment and observation,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never cease your creative motivation
You’ll be a scientist…
Perhaps there should also be a donation button just for this blog.
@GaryP
I’m not sure I follow, but personally I’m quite hard core scientifically minded and hold Popper dear. I consider CAGW to be an interesting hypothesis that has so far failed making verifiable predictions, and other hypotheses exist that do better. Thus I’m not of the opinion that neither the science nor the politics of CAGW is correct.
(On the contrary – being libertarian I’m as anti global political control structures you can possibly get)
@Pete
Thanks! I don’t post here that often, but I dislike the creation of a polarized environment where none is needed 🙂
@DirkH
The link I asked you to visit shows most US politicians as belonging in the top right quadrant of the political compass. Thus, by definition the middle ground in the rest of the world would be “left” of them. Conceding the authority to define what’s normal to the majority, it would be more correct to name both D and R as being “right”.
As to your question about what left-right policy a party that thinks the left-right axis is of less importance than the authoritarian-libertarian axis is I consider it moot. You might as well want to ask existing left-right parties where they are on the authoritarian-libertarian axis – and you’d be surprised at the answers!
(For those with a US worldview, you’ve got both big-state and small-state Republicans in the same party, while they would be considered very different if mapped onto the Political Compass)
Take the test and look through the analysis – it’s Sunday after all 🙂
http://www.politicalcompass.org/test
One explanation that would fit the decline in Warmista blog activity: the shills rewarded for activism are rewarded based on effectiveness. If they are viewed as ineffective, the funding dries up. What’s going to happen to RC when Fenton Communications decides not to renew the domain and stops paying the monthly hosting fees? Are these masters of using other people’s money going to dig deep into their own pockets?
Troed Sångberg says:
April 15, 2012 at 8:06 am
“As to your question about what left-right policy a party that thinks the left-right axis is of less importance than the authoritarian-libertarian axis is I consider it moot. You might as well want to ask existing left-right parties where they are on the authoritarian-libertarian axis – and you’d be surprised at the answers! ”
I was asking you for a link to ANY OFFICIAL statement by ANY of the pirate parties, and you have given me your answer. I thank you. It is the answer I expected.
Baa Humbug says:
….This scam is not dead, it’s not even dying. This scam is run by the UN, they will pursue it for a couple of generations if necessary….
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You are correct. The movers and shakers want a carbon tax and they will get it by hook or by crook. For example, the United Nations and the multi-national Ag corporations want to kill off independent farmers as part of the Agenda 21 “Sustainability” concept.
In the USA the push to regulate (and kill off) independent farmers started in 1940’s. SEE: History, HACCP and the Food Safety Con Job
It escalated in the 1990’s. SEE: 1993 to 2009 Timeline
Again the UN is intertwined in national politics:
HACCP
1960’s HACCP(Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point system) is developed by Pillsbury.
1993 Published: International HACCP guidelines developed by the Codex Alimentarius, a joint Programme of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)and the World Health Organization (WHO). revised in 1997. http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/005/Y1579E/y1579e03.htm
On July 25, 1996 HACCP is implemented in the USA by the FDA without a Congressional law. “Under the HACCP rule, industry is responsible for assessing potential food safety hazards and systematically preventing and controlling those hazards. FSIS is responsible for verifying that establishments’ HACCP systems are working …” http://www.fsis.usda.gov/PDF/Evolution_of_RBI_022007.pdf Food borne illness doubles in following years as FDA closes food testing labs.
1993 FAO prepares “the Global Strategy for the Management of Farm Animal Genetic Resources” ftp://ftp.fao.org/ag/cgrfa/cgrfa11/r11w9e.pdf
September 1995,Catherine Bertini, Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Program, and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, stated “Food is power. We use it to change behavior. Some may call that bribery. We do not apologize.” UN’s 4th World Conference on Women: Beijing, China. http://ngin.tripod.com/280702c.htm
1996 The Destruction of animals, Disposal procedures and Decontamination operation procedures is published http://www.fao.org/docrep/004/y0660e/Y0660E00.htm
2001 FAO Manual of procedures for disease eradication by stamping out http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/004/Y0660E/Y0660E00.HTM
In 2001 the UK suffers billions of pounds in losses as well as suicides as the FAO’s “disease eradication by stamping out” is put into practice. http://www.warmwell.com/footmoutheye.html
Now the gloves are off and the talk of “Global Governance” is out in the open.
http://www.un.org/documents/ga/conf166/ngo/950307140407.htm
[CIA FOIA PDF] National Intelligence Council & European Union Institute for Security Studies Report “Global Governance 2025: At a Critical Juncture”
WTO NEWS: Director General Lamy sees need for “right global governance” to meet global challenges
We lost the fight over who controls the money supply years ago especially since the signing of the so-called accord, in March of 1951… a particularly nasty bit of sleight-of-hand. We lost control of our food supply in 2010, and we are rapidly losing the fight over CO2 is a pollutant that must be taxed. I expect to see a “Carbon Tax” of some nature passed during the Lame Duck Session after the elections in November.
The Federal Reserve Act was passed December 23, 1913
The Food Safety Modernization Act was passed on Sunday night, December 19, 2010
Congress dearly loves to shaft Americans right before Christmas when we are not paying attention, so beware this coming December.
I too, am skeptical of CAGW demise. The need for “warm fuzzy” feelings is as great as ever. Modern people will continue to crave warm and fuzzy, and will pay ANY costs (your money) to feel they are contributing to the greater good (everyone warm and fuzzy). Reality has very little impact on such narcotic addiction. Junkies cannot be cured, but their addictions can be redirected. Just don’t hold your breath! GK
Ken Coffman , dpends on how is paying Fentons bills , after all they have honset commitment to ‘the cause’ as there are afterall a knife in the back for hire. So some one or something is pushing them to put so much of their time and effort into support it .
I suspect they’re too dense to understand this, but the only reason DeSmog traffic ticked up during the Peter Gleick, Fakegate affair was because the readers of WUWT and other skepic blogs wanted to check out what the apologists were saying.
If Anthony wanted to do a test, all he’d have to do is announce some shameless propaganda being posted over there (which he could truthfully do almost any day of the week), and then watch the numbers. 😉
There appears to be a long list of unsolvable scientific and policy problems for the extreme global warming supporters. It is quite amazing how long the manipulation of data and models to push an agenda has gone on.
It is quite amazing that the general public has supported the spending of billions of dollars on the green scams which were justified to “save the planet” from climate change. Hopefully reason and logic will eventually prevail.
Satellite data shows planetary cloud cover in the tropics increases or decreases to resist forcing changes (negative feedback). If the planet’s feedback response is negative a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will result in less than 1C with most of the warming at high latitudes. The lack of warming supports the negative feedback research.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/warrenmeyer/2012/02/09/understanding-the-global-warming-debate/
“The problem for global warming supporters is they actually need for past warming from CO2 to be higher than 0.7C. If the IPCC is correct that based on their high-feedback models we should expect to see 3C of warming per doubling of CO2, looking backwards this means we should already have seen about 1.5C of CO2-driven warming based on past CO2 increases. But no matter how uncertain our measurements, it’s clear we have seen nothing like this kind of temperature rise. Past warming has in fact been more consistent with low or even negative feedback assumptions.”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,662092,00.html
“Even though the temperature standstill probably has no effect on the long-term warming trend, it does raise doubts about the predictive value of climate models, and it is also a political issue. For months, climate change skeptics have been gloating over the findings on their Internet forums. This has prompted many a climatologist to treat the temperature data in public with a sense of shame, thereby damaging their own credibility.
“It cannot be denied that this is one of the hottest issues in the scientific community,” says Jochem Marotzke, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg. “We don’t really know why this stagnation is taking place at this point.”
Just a few weeks ago, Britain’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research added more fuel to the fire with its latest calculations of global average temperatures. According to the Hadley figures, the world grew warmer by 0.07 degrees Celsius from 1999 to 2008 and not by the 0.2 degrees Celsius assumed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And, say the British experts, when their figure is adjusted for two naturally occurring climate phenomena, El Niño and La Niña, the resulting temperature trend is reduced to 0.0 degrees Celsius — in other words, a standstill.”
The extreme AGW supporters appear to live in a fantasy world. The political solution to implement “the plan” is a new UN body with special powers that will “be capable of instilling a permanent crisis lasting decades, if not centuries.”
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/03/17/effective-world-government-will-still-be-needed-to-stave-off-climate-catastrophe/
“A policy article authored by several dozen scientists appeared online March 15 in Science to acknowledge this point: “Human societies must now change course and steer away from critical tipping points in the Earth system that might lead to rapid and irreversible change. This requires fundamental reorientation and restructuring of national and international institutions toward more effective Earth system governance and planetary stewardship.”….
…Among the proposals: a call to replace the largely ineffective U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development with a council that reports to the U.N. General Assembly, at attempt to better handle emerging issues related to water, climate, energy and food security. The report advocates a similar revamping of other international environmental institutions….
…Unfortunately, far more is needed. To be effective, a new set of institutions would have to be imbued with heavy-handed, transnational enforcement powers. There would have to be consideration of some way of embracing head-in-the-cloud answers to social problems that are usually dismissed by policymakers as academic naivete. In principle, species-wide alteration in basic human behaviors would be a sine qua non, but that kind of pronouncement also profoundly strains credibility in the chaos of the political sphere. Some of the things that would need to be contemplated: ….Would any institution be capable of instilling a permanent crisis mentality lasting decades, if not centuries? How do we create new institutions with enforcement powers way beyond the current mandate of the U.N.? Could we ensure against a malevolent dictator who might abuse the power of such organizations?
Meanwhile back in the real world:
“Germany’s Solar Industry Is In Trouble As Its Biggest Company Goes Bankrupt”
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-04-04/europe/31285529_1_q-cells-renewable-energy-solar-power-industry#ixzz1s8BRSpQk
Q-Cells, one of the biggest solar cell manufacturers in Germany and the world, has filed for bankruptcy, Spiegel Online reports. It’s the fourth German solar energy company to go bust in recent times.
Germany has been struggling with the decision to replace nuclear energy completely with renewable energy for a while. They are already struggling with a shortfall, which they have been forced to combat with exported nuclear energy in a seemingly counterproductive move.
Thank you to my fellow commentors who were able to flesh out my concerns about CAGW being the tool of the movement seeking totalitarian control of our lives rather than simply a controversy about climate science.
The battle over the facts of climate science is important but means little if the battle for individual liberty is lost.
So Joe Romm had his suitcase packed for him. Can’t think of a better candidate for being ignored by everyone. Now, how nice it would be if the same thing happened to James Hoggan and desmogblog. He’s almost as uncivil a cretin as Romm is.
The other bad news is that from all appearances the US economy is going to remain flat for a long time. Meaning that AGW is going to remain a backseat issue regardless of who’s in the administration. Speaking of which, maybe for the first time in its history, West Virginia WON’T vote Democrat. Then we will know that the worm has truly turned for the public.
So Big Joe’s collapse may be just part of an ongoing stream of rats bailing off the sinking ship, holed by the torpedo of public indifference. I’m sufficiently uncharitable enough to be captured by a vision of Joe up to his neck, clutching for a life preserver… and not finding one.
Robert E. Phelan and Bennet,
Yes, I’ve learned too. I’m voting a split ticket this time- 1/4 Ron Paul, 1/4 Mitt Romney, and 1/2 Barrack Obama. Oh wait, guess that means I have to vote Obama again because I prefer the lunacy of the greens (who I don’t think Obama is listening to very much, but needs to get re-elected) to the lunacy of Romney’s war hawks and tea party ideologues or Paul’s Austrian economists. There may be an internet presidential inauguration which will be worth considering. As Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” It looks like the CAGW crazyness is dying, not with a bang, but a wimper, and will continue to do so no matter who is elected.
Bennett says: @ur momisugly April 14, 2012 at 8:01 pm
@ur momisuglyRobert E. Phelan
Thanks man, I appreciate the slack.
I’ve learned and grown since ’08, and frankly, McCain and what’s-her-name still seem like a bad option, but then so did Obama.
_________________________
Wouldn’t it be nice to finally get to vote FOR someone for a change? It all seems like a dog and pony show for the masses while business as usual continues for those who are actually in power. Note how the unelected bureaucracy never seems to do anything but grow and regulations are pretty much “exempt” from the Constitutional right of a jury by your peers. Instead of English common law; you are free to do anything not specifically against the law; we are now rapidly approaching defacto Napoleonic law; everything is illegal unless specifically allowed by the state.
Bill Tuttle says: @ur momisugly April 14, 2012 at 9:19 pm
…. My neighbor’s kid goes to Rutgers and was unaware that you could take *direct* measurements of temperature and atmospheric composition by sending radiosondes ‘waaaay up in the sky
________________________________
THAT is truly frightening.
Allan MacRae says: @ur momisugly April 14, 2012 at 11:13 pm
A proposed new procedure to publish scientific papers and conduct peer review:…
Why don’t you, or Anthony or Joe, etc. establish a website specifically for parties to publish their climate research papers and have them critiqued – the rules could be simple – publish your paper with all data and all supporting calculations. Anyone can critique your paper provided they mind their manners, dot their i’s and cross their t’s. No gates and no gatekeepers. I expect that you would soon leave these once-prestigious journals and their gatekeepers in the dust.
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I do not think it should be websites specifically for publishing papers but instead a category within the already established websites.
WUWT and others already have a large following and that should be taken advantage of. It also allows the websites to grow and mature over time.