Note – this will be pinned as a top post for a few days. Other posts will appear below this one.
UPDATE: Josh weighs in with a Friday Funny.
UPDATE2: McKibben has a Forrest Gump moment with his latest propaganda video
I’m doing something I’ve never done before, I’m asking every reader of WUWT to write a letter to the editor this weekend. I don’t take this step lightly, but given what I’ve observed the last few days, I think it is time to stir the power of our collective WUWT community for the common good.
Readers may recall the debunkings I regularly put forth any time paid activists like Bill McKibben, Joe Romm, David Suzuki, or Brad Johnson (and others) try to make claims that human induced climate change is making our daily weather “more extreme”. You know and I know that this is “garbage science” (even worse than “junk science”) because it is an attempt to twist science to strike fear over climate into the hearts of the average citizen. It is an act of desperation, rooted in the fact that the modeled warming scenarios described by the scientist activist high priest of the global warming movement Dr. James Hansen, just have not come to pass. Climate feedbacks don’t seem to be strong, climate sensitivity doesn’t seem to be high, there’s been no statistically significant warming in the last decade, and thus the only thing left is to blame bouts of normally occurring severe weather on climate change. The level of thinking sophistication here isn’t much different from blaming witches for bad weather in medieval times, but the sophistication of telegraphing this message to the weak-minded is far more sophisticated than in those days.
And, yesterday, we saw a message similar to calls made during those dark times “she’s a witch, BURN her!” in Steve Zwick’s rant on Forbes.com where he says:
We know who the active denialists are – not the people who buy the lies, mind you, but the people who create the lies. Let’s start keeping track of them now, and when the famines come, let’s make them pay. Let’s let their houses burn. … They broke the climate. Why should the rest of us have to pay for it?
The level of delusional fail here is off the scale. If this were an isolated incident, we could simply laugh it off as the hateful rantings of a person afflicted with climate derangement syndrome. But there’s more.
Yesterday, it entered my children’s school (see below), and this week, we saw a survey on “extreme weather” conducted by Yale, use a phrase in the press release that is straight out of a propagandist organization, Bill McKibben’s 350.org. The heat is on to make climate all about the weather for propaganda purposes, and there’s no data to support it. It is a lie of global proportions. We need to step up. Here’s what I found in my children’s school yesterday:
At my children’s school yesterday, they had a book fair. In that book fair was this display from the publisher of a new book INsiders – Extreme Weather.
Of course you know what book I picked up to look at first, and it took me all of about 15 seconds to find this (I highlighted the relevant part digitally):
“Some scientists”? I think the author really meant “some activists”.
To be fair, there are some very good sections of the book well rooted in science, for example this one on lightning:
I know the author, H. Michael Mogil, who is well rooted in science, and who is a Certified Consulting Meteorologist. I can’t imagine him fully signing off on the climate=severe weather idea as McKibben et al put it. But, I think there was pressure from publishers to include the section on climate linkage, and I think he hedged his statement as best he could. My point is that is it beginning to pervade children’s books.
Also this week we had this poll released from Yale University, which got a ton of press thanks to it being carried in the Associated Press. It even made my own local newspaper.
The poll itself is a logical fallacy, with sloppy questions like this one:
I give it a thorough debunking here with a strong emphasis on the reporting bias introduced by our technologically saturated society. Anyone with a cellphone can report severe weather now and within minutes it can be known worldwide.
Here’s a quote from the lead author that was carried in news stories, bold mine:
“Most people in the country are looking at everything that’s happened; it just seems to be one disaster after another after another,” said Anthony A. Leiserowitz of Yale University, one of the researchers who commissioned the new poll. “People are starting to connect the dots.”
At the time, I didn’t note the significance of the “connect the dots” meme, but one of our sharp WUWT readers pointed out that this is the new catchphrase of Bill McKibben’s 350.org movement.
In tips and notes this morning, Nick Ryan confirmed this for me with this letter from McKibben he posted.
Subject: Good news.
From: organizers@350.org
To: nick_ryan@xxxx.xxx
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2012 18:57:30 +0000
Dear friends,
Good news this time.
At some point every one of us at 350 has thought to ourselves a little despairingly: is the world ever going to catch on to climate change? Today is one of those days when it feels like it just might happen.
A story on the front page of yesterday’s New York Times described a new poll — Americans in record numbers are understanding that the planet is warming because they’re seeing the “freaky” weather that comes with climate change.
And the story ends by describing the next step in this process: May 5, the giant Connect the Dots day that people are joining all around the globe: http://www.ClimateDots.org
When the zeitgeist conspires to help our efforts, we need to make the most of it. Two weeks is plenty of time to organize a beautiful photo for May 5, one that will help spread this idea. Are you in a place where flood and rain have caused havoc? Ten people with umbrellas can make a memorable “climate dot” for all the world to see. You’ll think of something appropriate for your place — and you can find lots of examples and ideas here.
This movement is growing quickly, and with not a moment to spare — new data from scientists like Jim Hansen at NASA shows that our carbon emissions have already made extreme weather many times more likely. We can’t take back the carbon we’ve already poured into the atmosphere, but if we work together hard and fast then we can keep it from getting steadily worse.
Earth Day is coming up this weekend, and there will be thousands of events across the US. Each one of them is a great place to spread the word about the big day of action on 5/5. When you’re on the front page of the Times it’s a sign that the message is starting to get through — but only one American in 300 reads that newspaper. Now it’s up to all of us to make sure that everyone around the world gets the message, and Connect the Dots day on 5/5 is our best chance to do that. Please join us.
Onwards,
Bill McKibben for 350.org
P.S. It is key to remember that these photos from May 5 are not just for their effect on that day. We need a bank of images showing the human face of global warming — pictures we’ll use for the hard and direct political work of the next few years. If people don’t know there’s a problem, they won’t try to solve it. So let’s show them on 5/5. Here’s a heartbreaking example, from some local activists in Texas:
Climate Activists in Texas
Clearly, due to the timing and the reference he made to “People are starting to connect the dots.”, the poll conducted by Anthony A. Leiserowitz of Yale University is just a tool that is connected to this 350.org “climatedots.org” campaign, it isn’t science, it is blatant advocacy disguised as science of the brand Dr. James Hansen practices.
So looking at what is going in total this week, I think it is time for us to exercise our own rights to free speech, and thus I’m asking WUWT readers to write letters to the editor to your local newspapers and magazines to counter what will surely be a blitz of advocacy in the coming days.
This tactic is used by these NGO’s so there is nothing wrong with it. It is free speech in the finest American tradition. There is one hitch though, and that’s the newspaper editors back-channel.
You see, one of the perks of being a journalist in the TV and radio news business is that I’m privy to how things work. In print media, editors have established a back-channel to alert each other of potential letter writing campaigns, such as those form letters like we see from “Forecast the Facts”.
The key is to make this your own letter, in your own words. While I can suggest topics, the letters need to be written in your own words for them to be accepted.
You can start here with this essay, and draw from it.
Warren Meyer made some excellent points yesterday in his Zwick rebuttal at Forbes:
A Vivid Reminder of How The Climate Debate is Broken
I really liked this part, which speaks to reporting bias (like we have with severe weather):
In the summer of 2001, a little boy in Mississippi lost an arm in a shark attack. The media went absolutely crazy. For weeks and months they highlighted every shark attack on the evening news. They ran aerial footage of sharks in the water near beaches. They coined the term “Summer of the Shark.” According to Wikipedia, shark attacks were the number three story, in terms of network news time dedicated, of the summer.
Bombarded by such coverage, most Americans responded to polls by saying they were concerned about the uptick in shark attacks. In fact, there were actually about 10% fewer shark attacks in 2001 than in 2000. Our perceptions were severely biased by the coverage.
How to write a letter:
1. Go to your local newspaper website, locate the guidelines for letters to the editor. Typical letter policies limit letters to 200-250 words.
2. Do your research, craft your letter carefully. Cite facts, cite statistics such as I offer on WUWT. Use your own words, don’t quote me, though quoting people like Professor Grady Dixon “…it would be a mistake to blame climate change for a seeming increase in tornadoes” is fine.
3. [added] Readers are submitting content ideas in comments, have a look at those. Fr example Steve E. writes: Dr. Roger Pielke Jr’s posting on the IPCC SREX Report, “A Handy Bullshit Button on Disasters and Climate Change” here: http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.ca/2012/03/handy-bullshit-button-on-disasters-and.html is also a good source for letter content.
4. Send it, being mindful of length and guidelines.
Thank you for your consideration. – Anthony
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As I write this, (17:40), wind power is generating 7.6% of metered installed capacity after peaking at 12.5% at 14:30.
Earlier in the day, (11:00) wind was generating a meagre 60Mw or 1.3% of metered installed capacity.
According to our government, this our “sustainable” future.
DaveE.
The dots are already connected, courtesy of the UN. The sad part is that the US and our Allies at the end of WWII created this Frankenstein monster with the best of intentions. And we all know where that brick road leads.
Quote (includes links to source documents)
The upcoming United Nations environmental conference on sustainable development will consider a breathtaking array of carbon taxes, transfers of trillions of dollars from wealthy countries to poor ones, and new spending programs to guarantee that populations around the world are protected from the effects of the very programs the world organization wants to implement, according to stunning U.N. documents examined by Fox News.
The main goal of the much-touted, Rio + 20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, scheduled to be held in Brazil from June 20-23, and which Obama Administration officials have supported, is to make dramatic and enormously expensive changes in the way that the world does nearly everything—or, as one of the documents puts it, “a fundamental shift in the way we think and act.”
Among the proposals on how the “challenges can and must be addressed,” according to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon:
–More than $2.1 trillion a year in wealth transfers from rich countries to poorer ones, in the name of fostering “green infrastructure, ” “climate adaptation” and other “green economy” measures.
–New carbon taxes for industrialized countries that could cost about $250 billion a year, or 0.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product, by 2020. Other environmental taxes are mentioned, but not specified.
–Further unspecified price hikes that extend beyond fossil fuels to anything derived from agriculture, fisheries, forestry, or other kinds of land and water use, all of which would be radically reorganized. These cost changes would “contribute to a more level playing field between established, ‘brown’ technologies and newer, greener ones.”
— Major global social spending programs, including a “social protection floor” and “social safety nets” for the world’s most vulnerable social groups for reasons of “equity.”
–Even more social benefits for those displaced by the green economy revolution—including those put out of work in undesirable fossil fuel industries. The benefits, called “investments,” would include “access to nutritious food, health services, education, training and retraining, and unemployment benefits.”
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/04/20/tab-for-uns-rio-summit-trillions-per-year-in-taxes-transfers-and-price-hikes/#ixzz1sbIKsgRC
Bill McKibben has asked his readers (acolytes?) for photos of them suffering from ‘extreme weather’.
What say some of us here at WUWT send him some of us enjoying the weather? e.g. pictures of families laughing whilst having snow-ball fights, someone sat in a deckchair in the sun raising a lovely mojito cocktail towards the camera, or a romantic couple happily kicking through the autumn leaves?
I would really love to send him a picture of me in a pair of ‘budgie-smuggler’ speedos enjoying the sun by the pool, but the weathermen are predicting the coldest May for 100 years here in the UK – damn!
It appears there is an orchestrated pushback as articles appear, such as the Shakun et al paper, to counteract the successful refutation of AGW climate science and polls show the public are turning away from the issue for a variety of reasons and not only economic.
Here is my latest article on one aspect of what has and is happening.
http://drtimball.com/2012/nasa-giss-director-james-hansen-plays-climate-science-victimization-card/
As I have mentioned before this is a shift of tactics. Remember when skeptics pointed to cool weather events and Warmists said words to the effect:
Now that there has been no statistically significant warming for over a decade they now use……………….the weather argument. These people are a bunch of shameless scam artists who are targeting impressionable minds with their brazen lies and propaganda.
Why did the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883, killing upwards of 40,000 people, cause world-wide fears that Judgement Day was nigh, while the nearby Indonesian eruption of Tambora in 1815, approximately 10 times bigger, killing about 100,000 people, remained almost unknown? The difference was that in the intervening 68 years, trans-oceanic and trans-continental telegraph cables had been laid, allowing nearly real-time accounts of the cataclysm to be reported in the daily newspapers. There was a dramatic rise in the flow of information, but unfortunately no concomitant rise in the flow of understanding.
The increased social connectedness of the world, through the 24/7 news cycle and electronic social media, and the increased instrumentation of society, have combined to create the impression that all sorts of bad things have ominously increased, and that WE MUST BE CAUSING IT. Bad weather, bad earthquakes, bad diseases. In my field, the issue is cancer. I have friends and family members who are all convinced that cancer rates are skyrocketing due to cell phones, power lines, widespread groundwater contamination, military radars, food additives, Monsanto, BP, etc. The truth is that some cancers are rising, some are falling, but overall the trend since 1975 in both incidence and mortality has been downward, although not downward enough to anyone’s liking. We should also not dismiss that there are environmental causes of cancer, some natural like sunlight, and some man-made, like soot. It is sensible to try to limit these exposures.
When Bill McKibben and I were growing up in Lexington, Massachusetts, we had all kinds of extreme weather. The snows of ’69 which became the 2nd largest 3-day snow total, after being eclipsed by the Blizzard of ’78. The Battle of Lexington reenactment on the Battle Green every Patriot’s Day created a kind of annual memory snapshot of the weather on April 19th. I can remember going to the parade in sweltering 90 degree heat, and in calf-deep snow, under clear skies, or under a Nor’easter. For my whole life, I have harbored the impression that Patriot’s Day was the most extremely variable weather day of the year, because literally any kind of weather was a possibility.
Bill would now have us believe that the large, destructive fluctuations in weather that have always occurred are increasing, and increasingly our fault. This is madness. The data refutes all of this. If there has been any trend in Hurricanes, it has been slightly downward since Hurricane Belle nearly washed me off New Hampshire’s Wilderness Trail in 1976. The same is true for category F3-F5 tornadoes. All increases in losses from these phenomena are man-made only insofar as our population and assets are increasingly in their path. While it is true that the world has warmed slightly (approximately 0.55 C) since Bill McKibben and I slogged to fifth grade through the deep 1969 snow, there is no evidence that climate variability has increased, and every reason to believe that the impression of climate variability is the product of a heightened perception of our environment, without the concomitant heightened understanding that only comes with time.
Here is an earlier article explaining why the claim that warming causes more extreme weather is wrong.
http://drtimball.com/2012/claims-global-warming-increases-severe-weather-are-scientifically-incorrect/
So, global warming will warm the poles, will it?
But what about the germans?
Freaky zeitgeist, man. The anarcho Marxists are pouring out of the woodwork like cockroaches on crack. Ma and Pa Kettle aren’t fooled, but the NEWSPAPER EDITORS swallow it hook line and sinker, and get dragged into the boat where they flop around gasping for air.
I appreciate your request, Rev. Okay, I’ll see what I can do. But really, newspaper editors are morons and tools, headed for the Dustbin of History.
It’s all happening right here, on the Net, maybe not as fast as we’d like, but it’s happening. There isn’t a newspaper editor in the country that can hold a candle to you and to what you have accomplished. The masses are not mindless drones. The truth will out, digitally. The kids don’t read the paper — they’re busy on the Net.
KUTGW and don’t let the anarcho Marxist bedbugs bite.
In spite of use of junk science they may just win this If so, off the cliff we shall go, just as we reach the end of the good (warm) years. I’m stocking up on wood, ammo and food.
I think the collapse of Western nations has reached the point where we don’t need to waste our energy providing facts. The apocalyptic wackos are a VERY EXPENSIVE LUXURY, and most governments have quietly decided they’re not worth supporting. Facts had nothing to do with the gov’t decision to support the wackos, and facts will have nothing to do with the turnoff.
For the:
“We know who the active denialists are – not the people who buy the lies, mind you, but the people who create the lies. Let’s start keeping track of them now, and when the famines come, let’s make them pay. Let’s let their houses burn. … They broke the climate. Why should the rest of us have to pay for it?”
I’ll do him one better. I promise to way waste to my family and property. I’ll give away everything I own and suffer all unspeakable vengeance willingly.
When the famines don’t come because of AGW then I want all the money they intend to spend to drop c02 by .02% which, I believe, works out to 176 trillion dollars. Considering who I’m dealing with, I’d like that in gold, not cash.
Another sad thought: most of the young squishy minds today in the US are incapable of either reading or writing grammatically correct English. Science ability? Give me a break! The insides of their “technologically saturated” toys shall forever remain a mystery to most. Try comprehending your teenager’s iPad or his input back into it!
Anthony, I have written such letters as you suggest to my local papers; they have simply been ignored, yet letters are regularly printed (some in Spanglish!) supporting ObamaCare or Nancy Pelosi’s latest attempt to amend the First Amendment “out of the Constitution” (her words!) (Out! Out, damned spot!”) (sorry Bill /Sarc))
Mind you, I live in one of the reddest of States (the Republic of Texas!) but the media still live in their private Twilight Zones here! On TV I get better weather reports from watching Speed Channel, than from the Weather Channel! It is mind boggling and disheartening that the Internet is awash with such rubbish (not only AGW) that is aimed directly at the aforementioned squishy minds. Moreover, they likely do not not read the News outlets anyway. Such letters, even if published, will only be read by the choir.
Anyone have any suggestions to brighten my mood? In my 65 years, I have never seen such an upside down world as we currently must contend with. It’s raining here today, as a direct consequence of the cold front currently making its way across our great Nation, interacting with the warm, moist air of East Texas. Funny, how it had to cool off first to rain…
These people don’t care about fact, just spin and propaganda. Yaaaawn….
Weird weather – no trends
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.776/full
Historically low global tropical cyclone activity
http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/gl1114/2011GL047711/2011GL047711.pdf
Floods – no increase in frequency, less intense
http://itia.ntua.gr/en/docinfo/1128/
Extreme weather events – no trend
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jastp.2011.01.021
Global precipitation – no trends
http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2005GL025393
Rate of sea level rise – deceleration over 80 years
http://www.jcronline.org/doi/abs/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-10-00157.1
Forest fires – decreasing frequency
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2307/3237261/abstract
Oh, I can connect dots, from Climategate 1 to Climategate II to Gleick to…
As Mike Bromley mentioned above, Alberta (of oilsands fame) is in the midst of an election and a newbi candidate for Premier, Dannielle Smith stated in a debate that climate science is not settled. An enormous bruhaha has followed and her large lead in the polls has fallen considerably. University of Alberta ecologist David Schindler has thrown all the mud he could at her: “I wonder if she thinks the flat Earth debate is settled?” Andrew Weaver of University of Victoria jumped in as well saying the proof for global warming is overwhelming, “as overwhelming as gravity”.
I’ve sent a letter to the Red Deer Advocate containing three quotes from the NASA astronaut letter stating unequivocally that “the science is NOT settled”. I love the irony that Schindler and Weaver would have to paint these astronauts as “flat earthers” too! I actually doubt it will be printed as the editor has twice ridiculed Smith’s stance. There is only Saturday’s paper prior to Monday’s election.
It may be good PR to enlist the support of your followers, writing letters to the editors around the country and elsewhere. But none of this changes the science, advanced by thousands of working scientists who have published their findings in the accepted fashion. Physics is still physics and chemistry is still chemistry. Neither respond to the positions of letter writers, no matter how numerous. SO far, the PR approach has been working. There is just no accounting for willful ignorance.
@ur momisugly Dave Dodd says:
April 20, 2012 at 11:18 am
Anthony, I have written such letters as you suggest to my local papers; they have simply been ignored, yet letters are regularly printed (some in Spanglish!) supporting ObamaCare or Nancy Pelosi’s latest attempt to amend the First Amendment “out of the Constitution” (her words!) (Out! Out, damned spot!”) (sorry Bill /Sarc))
*************************************************************************************************
Thank God for the 2nd Amendment, and what little time we have left to stock up.
Hate to have to tell you all this but it is quite simply true that any excess energy we put into the atmosphere WILL cause an increase in the energy of the weather of the planet. Simple thermodynamics. The issue is literally that air pressure at sea level is regulated by gravity. The gravity doesn’t change so any increase in energy causes the circulation of the atmosphere to not only become faster, but change and become more active.
For years we’ve been discussing the “urban heat island” effect without quite connecting to the facts of weather. Urban heat islands DO affect the weather both locally and down-wind, Georgia Tech did some studies about it, Weather responded to I285’s heat signature on the radar.
So its not “global warming” or “anthro warming” that are causing it… its just increases in the efficiency of photo-conversion to heat at ground level.
The system MUST obey the law of thermodynamics so the system flows faster. The basic average pressure will not change.
Here in the Kitsilano district of Vancouver I have two notable neighbours. I’m very proud of one: the former RCMP vessel St. Roche. In the 1940s this small wooden ship traversed the North West Passage. Such were the arctic ice conditions then that a short time later it did it again, this time both ways. In fact, the St. Roche was the first vessel ever to circumnavigate North America, the south part being through the Panama Canal. She now lives at our Maritime Museum, right in plain sight.
I also have a deeply embarrassing neighbour. His name is David Suzuki, and he lives on the shoreline even closer to the St. Roche than I do. He proclaims loud concern about the present state of arctic ice. He likes money, fame, and multiple houses. He does not like debates.
Suzuki is a media darling here. Most people have forgotten the St. Roche. Would that it were the other way around.
“They broke the climate”
Words fail. THE climate? And who is “they”? You mean “Them”? Nine-foot mutant ants?
“Hey, Manolo! They broke the President, man!”
— Firesign Theatre, “Up Against The Wall of Science”
Alas, scientific truth is not what motivates the young climate activist; it is emotional truth. There is a widespread emotional need to feel that we have fallen from Eden because of sin against Mother Earth, and that we must band together and make sacrifices to the great cause of restoring the Garden. Even if the scientific truth is that damaging weather events are not increasing, or even decreasing, the “emotional truth” is that they are increasing because the emotional need to interpret them in terms of our collective sin against Earth is increasing.
There is no amount of data that will move these true believers. Seeing Bill McKibben get weepy on TV is what moves them. Only when a sympathetic reporter interviews a weepy Anthony Watts who decries the cost of insane carbon limiting measures to vulnerable children with large, sad eyes, and to their puppies, will we make progress.
@ur momisugly prjindigo says:
April 20, 2012 at 11:46 am
Hate to have to tell you all this but it is quite simply true that any excess energy we put into the atmosphere WILL cause an increase in the energy of the weather of the planet. Simple thermodynamics. The issue is literally that air pressure at sea level is regulated by gravity. The gravity doesn’t change so any increase in energy causes the circulation of the atmosphere to not only become faster, but change and become more active.
****************************************************************************************************
Actually gravity does change – http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/04/110406-new-map-earth-gravity-geoid-goce-esa-nasa-science/
Where is you peer reviewed empirical evidence on extreme weather trends?
Here are mine:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/20/a-request-to-readers-write-a-connect-the-dots-letter-this-weekend/#comment-961958
How can you be so blase’ about the future of our planet? I think the catastrophes will be even worse than the Y2K catastrophe. You remember how all the banks, hospitals, government offices, stores and so on all stopped working and how we all starved to death? How could you forget that? Fortunately we were well informed by the hundreds upon hundreds of articles in the MSM so we knew in advance we were doomed.