Oh boy. The propaganda gets thicker. It’s a Forrest Gump moment.
Billy McKibben connects the weather dots, except it spells out nothing more than – sh** happens. This is one of the most hilarious propaganda videos I’ve ever seen, showing weather events (and some not weather events), just like have happened for millions of years. Except this time the meme is “there’s something really wrong with our weather”. 
The smokestack in reverse at the end is a nice touch, which is a hat tip to the parent organization 350.org
Watch the video:
OK let’s look at the claims, from the front page of climatedots.org
Across the planet now we see ever more flood, ever more drought, ever more storms. People are dying, communities are being wrecked — the impacts we’re already witnessing from climate change are unlike anything we have seen before.
350.org, Bill McKibben’s parent of climatedots.org says:
And what does this 350 number even mean?
350 is the number that leading scientists say is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide—measured in “Parts Per Million” in our atmosphere. 350 PPM—it’s the number humanity needs to get back to as soon as possible to avoid runaway climate change.
And who made the 350 “safe” declaration? Well of course it is everyone’s favorite arrested scientist, James Hansen:
Where did this 350 number come from?
Dr. James Hansen, of NASA, the United States’ space agency, has been researching global warming longer than just about anyone else. He was the first to publicly testify before the U.S. Congress, in June of 1988, that global warming was real. He and his colleagues have used both real-world observation, computer simulation, and mountains of data about ancient climates to calculate what constitutes dangerous quantities of carbon in the atmosphere. The full text of James Hansen’s paper about 350 can be found here.
It follows then that the date of the “safe” level should be determined. This is easy to do using MLO’s CO2 graph, the most cited graph on CO2 in the world
Source: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
So ~1987 is the year where the atmosphere became “unsafe”.
How about those pre-1987 weather disasters Billy?
I’ve removed the ones after 1987 from the list below
From NOAA in 1999: NOAA RELEASES CENTURY’S TOP WEATHER, WATER AND CLIMATE EVENTS
Click here for background on the weather events listed below.
– Galveston Hurricane, 1900
historic photos: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
– Dust Bowl, 1930s
– Super Tornado Outbreak, 1974
– Hurricane Camille, 1969
– New England Hurricane, 1938
– Tri-state Tornado, 1925
– The Great Okeechobee Hurricane & Flood, 1928
– The Storm of the Century, 1950
– Florida Keys Hurricane, 1935
– New England Blizzard, 1978
Top Global Weather/Water/Climate Events (no particular order):
Click here for background on the climate/weather events listed below.
– Yangtze River Flood, China, 1931
– North Vietnam Flood, 1971
– Great Iran Flood, 1954
– Bangladesh Cyclone, 1970
– China Typhoons, 1912, 1922
– Typhoon Vera, Japan, 1958
– Asian Droughts (India 1900,1907,1965-67; China 1907,1928-30,1936,1941-42; and Soviet Union 1921-22)
– Sahel Drought, Africa, 1910-1914, 1940-44, 1970-85
– Iran Blizzard ,1972
– Europe Storm Surge, 1953
– Great Smog of London, 1952
– El Niño, 1982-83
=============================================
And there are more at this big list
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_by_death_toll
McKibben and his 350.org/connect the dots followers are full of it.
According to Psychology Today, it may just be McKibben’s search for meaning in the emptiness in his head:
Humans have a rocky relationship with randomness. On the one hand, we declare that “shit happens”–an acknowledgment that bad things sometimes occur for no particular reason. But more often than not, our minds resist randomness, searching for meaning even where none exists.
I suppose it is all part of the illogic of climate hysteria.
And since McKibben relies heavily on TV news videos for his propaganda, it confirms exactly what I have been saying here:
Infrared~ how many of those ‘2000 scientists’ are climate scientists?
Hint: claiming all 2000 of them are climate scientists, doesn’t add to our already Low opinion of you. Unless you want to claim that people who specialize in physiology, psychology, economics and a myriad of other fields- and whom were asked to work up scenarios based upon an unproven hypothesis– are somehow ‘climate’ scientists.
btw, the head of the IPCC himself, recently said ‘400’ scientists, nor did he qualify that with the word ‘climate.’
Infrared says:
April 22, 2012 at 2:41 am
Thankyou. And you’re right.
But as in any high-stakes poker game, I’ll see your sarcasm and raise you with some poignant facts:
First, it doesn’t matter how many “scientists” say global warming is anthropogenic if the IPCC is a politicized body (or haven’t you noticed how they have been anything but accurate–something that an engineer would point out immediately). I’ll take the word of 49 astronauts over your UN-bogus “scientists” anyday, especially in light of what passes for post-normal “science” and “peer-review” scientific journals these days.
Second, you say “we live on a planet with infinite resources” but that isn’t the argument. The critical factor is whether we continue to allow the primary mover of our world economy, which is carbon-based fuels, to be curtailed drastically because some “2,000 scientists” can’t or won’t recognize that CO2 is a BENEFIT and not a DETRIMENT to the biosphere.
THAT is the crux of the issue, and were you to seriously study the intentions of the UN and understand their stance on global governance, you’d be just as adamantly against this whole CAGWCF (CF for Control Freaks) meme as I am. Curtailing carbon-based fuels puts the world economy into an unrecoverable tailspin until viable alternatives reach critical mass (and no, solar and wind are not “viable”).
By the way, I’m also a scientist: BS, MS geology; BS, ME Mining Engineering. I found out science is only half the story infrared–you should study to be an engineer, too.
In response to Hugh Pepper, commenter James Sexton said:
Let’s not pretend skeptics aren’t demonized across this land by Billy and the minions of maniacal misanthropists. Anthony is a frequent target…….
Tell you what Hugh Pepper, I’ll change “Billy” to William when your side of the debate stops acting like delinquent teenagers. For example, when I ask for a correction of Mike Roddy for his article:
Mr. Michael V. Roddy
[address redacted]
Malibu, CA
12/11/2010
Dear Mr. Roddy,
Pursuant to our email exchange, I am providing you this opportunity to correct some factually libelous errors associated with a report you made today on a website called “Alternet”.
In this report, titled “5 Awards For the World’s Most Heinous Climate Villains” you have made a number of claims which are simply false. They are false because you sought no background information from either myself or anyone who might be knowledgeable on the subject of my personal business and publications.
1. The first factual error.
You write: “NOAA decided to take him up on his claim and analyzed the station data from all 1223 sites, and found no evidence of bias or distortion. “
The factual error you made is that they did not analyze all 1223 sites. The 1223 number is incorrect in total (1218 is the correct number). They analyzed approximately 40% of the total network, based on data from me, which they downloaded and used before the surfacestations project was completed.
This is clearly demonstrated in the Menne et al 2010 paper: On the reliability of the U.S. surface temperature record
Download here: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/menne-etal2010.pdf
From Figure 1:
Source: “V1.05 USHCN Master Station List.” (Note this file was
downloaded from http://www.surfacestations.org in June 2009, but is indicated as having been updated
on 18 April 2008. A more complete set of USHCN station classifications as referenced by Watts [2009]
was not available for general use at the time of this analysis.)
and from the bottom of page 2 continuing into page 3:
The geographic distribution of stations that fall into the two categories is shown in Figure 1 (note that just over 40% of the 1218 total USHCN Version 2 sites had available ratings).
Thus, NCDC used an incomplete data set in their paper, NOT the entire data set. They used data prior to my completion of the project, and did so against my wishes in correspondence. You may not like this fact, but is certainly true and can be verified by Matt Menne at NCDC.
My arguments against using the data set at this time was because the data set was spatially clumped near population centers, a byproduct of volunteerism. Only a handful of good “rural” sites had been surveyed at that point, thus providing an incomplete record which was biased toward urban stations.
2. The next factual error in your article is:
Anthony instantly dropped the project with no mention of his error and simply began shouting…
No, the project has NOT been dropped. And continues to have it’s database updated. For example, if you view the surfacestations.org web page you’ll see this notice:
Surfacestations project reaches 82% of the network surveyed. 1003 of 1221 stations have been examined in the USHCN network. The Google Earth map below shows current coverage.
That is approximately double the number of stations that Menne et al 2010 used from my data set. The reason that Menne et al found no difference is because the data they used (by their own admission) was incomplete, because the project was incomplete at the time it was published. We now have enough stations both in rural and urban settings for the analysis to show the signal differences between station types, and enough to be fully spatially representative of the entire CONUS.
Further, the project remains active. If you had taken the time to check the surfacestations.org database online here:
http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php (by following the link from main page)
And then click: “View Latest Updates” which leads you here:
http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_view=dynamicalbum.UpdatesAlbum&g2_albumId=7
You find several updates from 11/25/10, 11/22/10, 11/20/10 and so on from volunteers that are still actively updating the project.
The purposes of this are two fold:
1. Continuing to locate stations to have a complete a database as possible
2. Quality control. Some stations that originally could only be surveyed aerially have been followed up with ground photos and with interviews with observers to get all the metadata possible and to ensure quality control.
The purposes of quality control (our third pass now) have to do with the peer reviewed paper, now submitted an in review with the same journal that published Menne et al 2010.
If you are at all familiar with peer review, you might realize that reviewers sometimes ask for entire sections of analysis to be done in a different way. To ensure that myself and my co-authors meet that criteria set by the reviewers, additional field work and QC is required.
While the project remains active, and data is being updated, we have made no recent public announcements because the focus has been on analysis, QC, and completing the peer review process.
It is my belief that you have mistaken this lack of front page updates or notices on WUWT for “dropping the project” when clearly it is active and the station metadata database is being updated.
3. The third factual error in your article is:
…support him through former pro-smoking “researchers” at the Heartland Institute.
Mr Roddy, this is especially disturbing and painful to me for the following reason.
Both of my parents died from smoking related illness. My father died in November 1969 when I was 11 years old of a myocardial infraction brought on by lung disease. My mother died of lung cancer in August of 1989. Both were smokers.
Before I attended any Heartland Convention I asked the CEO, Joseph Bast to assure me that no part of the convention or my modest speakers fee and travel reimbursement had anything to do with tobacco companies. I was assured in writing that it was not.
Given my own personal family tragedy, I made that a condition, and one that I take seriously. Therefore, I have no funding from Heartland related to tobacco, and I only have a speakers fee and travel expenses reimbursed for attending their conference and speaking.
In this case I don’t personally fault you because you would not have been able to research this online, unlike the issues with the data and Menne et al above. Therefore I ask that you have the personal decency to remove or change references to pro-smoking supporting me.
I further ask that you correct the factual errors that I have demonstrated in points 1 and 2 above.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Anthony Watts
========================================================================
And then Roddy (who supports Bill McKibben) and his co-author respond with this:
http://www.webcitation.org/5x0pgZdgl
See the “corrections” at the end, which he apparently fully agrees with, due to this comment on Climate Progress:
You can read all about Mike Roddy
here.
Death-eating Luddite sociopaths such as Paul Ehrlich, John Holdren, Keith Farnish, fostering a Green Gang of peculating AGW catastrophists, are ill-willed propagandists pure-and-simple, acting ever in bad faith under false pretenses to sabotage modern-day energy economies, undermine the whole range of post-Enlightenment industrial/technological civilization for their personal extreme-reactionary benefit.
This Earth Day (Lenin’s birthday) 2012, these junk-science monomaniacs are true “enemies of the people” (cf: Alexandr Solzhenitsyn). To anyone doubting their intent, we answer with two words: Norman Borlaug. The bleats and squeaks this seminal figure evokes from Warmist commissars and gauleiters are wondrous to behold.
Living in NYC for any length of time, one realizes that appearances mean nothing: The bedraggled derelict mooching along Fifth Avenue and 57th Street is a software billionaire shopping Tiffany’s for his beloved wife’s twentieth wedding anniversary Guard Band; behind him, the good bourgeois of beneficent countenance, replete with rep tie and professorial tweeds, is a monster of junk-science depravity advocating the annihilation by famine and disease of 95% of Earth’s current global population [we refer specifically to Paul Ehrlrich, John Holdren, Keith Farnish, and their Green Gang of peculating Luddite sociopaths].
When the tumbrils roll, Mike Roddy will stand right next to Robespierre. Can’t happen soon enough.
Seeing nothing so far, I suppose Hugh Pepper can’t bring himself to condemn Mike Roddy, nor form a cogent rebuttal.
You’re right, Anthony–all these self-proclaiming “experts” and critics (and verifiably nasty dudes in your case) are suddenly nowhere to be found.
But that’s ok–maybe they’re pondering while in their self-imposed isolation.
I’m thinking that “Hugh Pepper” is an anagram of “James Hanson”.
Not a correct anagram, of course, but the kind of anagram that emerges from the same type of mind that imagines ever increasing catastrophic weather severity and endless global warming driven by human activity.
Try it yourself, it’s amazing what emerges. “Rings of a Siberian tree” becomes “determinant of thousands of years of global temperatures.” “Lack of warming for more than a decade” becomes “obviously the deep, deep, deep seas are absorbing the warmth, but only until next Tuesday, then WATCH OUT!”. “Realism overcomes warmist alarmism” becomes “holy sh*t, I’m about to lose three of my four homes, and 90% of my million/year speaking enagements.”
But heck, as long as they impoverish the rest of the world at their enrichment, I suppose it’s ok as long as their intentions are good. (That’s an anagram for “good for THEM”.)
Anthony,
I admire the way both you and Steve McIntyre have handled the smears.
I have to watch myself, because fellows like Roddy and Pepper get my blood boiling. I can sink to their level all too easily.
The best thing to hit back with is the Truth. Not only the scientific facts, but the truth of their own behavior. To simply quote their smears is to hold up a mirror, and let them see themselves. (And let everyone else see as well.)
I don’t blame a fellow like McKibben for wanting to keep his farm in Vermont clean and green. However there is no need for any smears or flasehoods. If he doesn’t like pipelines, he should stick to the facts. It is when he distorts Truth, and perpetuates actual lies, that my blood starts to boil. It is then he is a fellow who speaks fondly of small farms and rural communities, while increasing the cost of heating a farmhouse and running a small tractor. It won’t hurt a wealthy landowner like himself, but it sure hurts the little guy.
Stand by the Truth and Truth will stand by you.