From The Legend of the Titanic at RealClimate (bold mine):
However, if the notion that information makes little impact is correct, one may wonder what the point would be in having a debate about climate change, and why certain organisations would put so much efforts into denial, as described in books such as Heat is on, Climate Cover-up, Republican war on science, Merchants of doubt, and The Hockeystick and Climate Wars. Why then, would there be such things as ‘the Heartland Institute’, ‘NIPCC’, climateaudit, WUWT, climatedepot, and FoS, if they had no effect? And indeed, the IPCC reports and the reports from the National Academy of Sciences? One could even ask whether the effort that we have put into RealClimate has been in vain.
Look at the data, then you be the judge:
From Alexa.com – note that the lower number for traffic rank is better
(Google is traffic rank #1 for example)
Source for comparisons: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wattsupwiththat.com+realclimate.org#
Seems like an order of magnitude slam dunk to me, RC can’t even get out of the grass at greater than 100,000 traffic rank…they aren’t even being tracked anymore. Here’s the last 6 months:
Source: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/realclimate.org#
Rasmus goes on to say at RC:
What do I think? Public opinion is changed not by big events as such, but by the public interpretation of those events. Whether a major event like hurricane Katrina or the Moscow heat wave changes attitudes towards climate change is determined by people’s interpretation of this event, and whether they draw a connection to climate change – though not necessarily directly. I see this as a major reason why organisations such as the Heartland are fighting their PR battle by claiming that such events are all natural and have nothing to do with emissions.
The similarity between these organisations and the Titanic legend is that there was a widespread misconception that it could not sink (and hence it’s fame) and now organisations like the Heartland make dismissive claims about any connection between big events and climate change. However, new and emerging science is suggesting that there may indeed be some connections between global warming and heat waves and between trends in mean precipitation and more extreme rainfall.
This is a good time to remind readers and the few remaining RC denizens of why Rasmus Benestad is clueless on the “emerging science” of severe weather = climate change:
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I’ll bet that 97% of the passengers on Titanic thought it was unsinkable. There are never enough lifeboats when you need ’em.
Tom Deutsch says:
May 3, 2012 at 12:36 pm
@ur momisugly Ken Coffman – “Gavin is a public employee and it is apparently a large part of his day job to monitor and post at RC”
I find it odd that there is a lot of focus on ad hominem on a site that purports to be about science
KC’s comment that you quote hardly constitutes an ad hominem and I would point out that, from my scan of comments, no one was addressing the topic of RC’s funding until you raised it with your dubious comment about their not receiving government money.
Monty says: May 3, 2012 at 12:47 pm
Hi Scottish Sceptic
That’s a FANTASTIC idea! Yes, why don’t you publish original science
Some people just can’t get it. I said let’s investigate the science and you just about suggest I manufacture it. Can’t you see that difference? A dispassionate review of the evidence (most of it probably already available) versus publishing utter junk to make a stupid point.
As I said, these guys at realclimate were so bad we can’t even rely on them to make their own case properly. We have to be open to all possibilities including that being wrong … meant they failed to understand evidence that supports the warming scenario.
mods
Please delete my comment above, i was mistaken.
[REPLY: OK. Done. -REP]
Kim2ooo – Fanatics do not usually use their brains. They do not have to n order to be part of the group. So your “trick” beats Mike’s nature trick all to hell!
Wasn’t there a UN IPCC report very recently that showed no link between extreme weather events and climate change meaning that Katrina, the Moscow heatwave and widespread floods were not caused by us driving 4×4 SUVs.
Are those cAGW religion believers at real climate now claiming that the IPCC are a bunch of deniers too?
Jim Owen says:
May 3, 2012 at 9:38 am
As always, the left/alarmist denizens are entirely clueless about history.
============================================================================
More like literature: Aesop’s fables feature “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” It’s a tried and tested
fable, and has claimed yet another crier.
When the predicted/prophesied fails to eventuate, the people don’t fuss, they just ignore.
Anthony’s recipe for this site is based on the tried and true: it’s honest, direct, civil to all and consistent. Consquently the people here keep coming back. They tell others, who come, test the waters and start coming back. Most peole possess good filters for both BS and BS and eventually recognise when they’re being gamed.
As with the Titanic, mother nature prove’s man is not the most powerful force on the planet,
you’d think they’d figured this out by now!!!
rgbatduke says:
May 3, 2012 at 11:21 am
I really enjoyed your post. However, I should point out that there are old thermometers that record the daily minimum and maximum as well as paper wheel recording thermometers that make weekly recordings. The problem is knowing what type of measuring device was used, where it was housed, and when it was read. Until that information is made available, any reported “change in temperature” is simply a wild guess.
They were doomed from the beginning when they named their site – “Real Climate”!!
Therein lies the biggest fallacy of all. But then “Real Average Weather During an Arbitrary Period of Time, over a Geographical Area” doesn’t roll of the tongue quite the same way, does it….
Smokey says the following: “He doesn’t understand the scientific method: skeptics have nothing to prove. The onus is entirely and exclusively on those who put forth the CAGW/AGW conjectures”. I disagree…there is well established science that shows you are wrong.
S/he says: “Monty should read The Hockey Stick Illusion by A.W. Montford, available on the right sidebar”. So you think science written by accountants (or whatever Mr Montford is) without a PhD is the way to go?
Smokey says: “Real world evidence shows that the effect is so small it is unmeasurable; probably ≈1ºC per 2xCO2, ±0.5ºC”. Yes, this is well known…and it’s well known that feedbacks (albedo, water vapour etc) act to amplify this. Which is how we have glacial/interglacials.
Smokey says: “But from all the evidence, feedbacks are on balance negative. Positive feedbacks exist only in computer models, not in the real world”. No they aren’t and no they don’t. You think albedo feedback only exists in computer models?
Smokey says: “there are other explanations for glacial cycles that do not require the extraneous CO2 molecule”. Such as?
Smokey: “Furthermore, ΔCO2 follows ΔT on all time scales, from months to hundreds of millennia. CO2 is the effect, not the cause, of rising temperature”.
No it doesn’t…warming now is following CO2 rise. The role of CO2 in glacial/interglacials is probably as an amplifier of Milankovitch forcing (although recent paper by Shakun suggests this is complicated by bipolar seesaws). I suggest you do some reading.
In the end, EVERY major scientific body and EVERY National Academy of Sciences of ALL the industrial nations agrees with me. And NONE agrees with you. Makes you think doesn’t it!
For the good of humankind, why can’t we just make RealClimate the homepage of all browsers. [/sarcasm]
The similarity between these organisations and the Titanic legend is that there was a widespread misconception that it could not sink (and hence it’s fame) and now organisations like the Heartland make dismissive claims about any connection between big events and climate change. However, new and emerging science is suggesting that there may indeed be some connections between global warming and heat waves and between trends in mean precipitation and more extreme rainfall.
Interestingly, it is an urban myth that it was said that the titanic was unsinkable. It was only after the event that this was said and this urban myth was born.
philjourdan says:
May 3, 2012 at 1:50 pm
Kim2ooo – Fanatics do not usually use their brains. They do not have to n order to be part of the group. So your “trick” beats Mike’s nature trick all to hell!
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Thank you! 🙂
If ‘they’ were good, ‘they’ would have conducted ‘baseline radiative temperature profile measurements’ (field observation ‘experiments’) decades ago in a pristine (non-urban, primarily vegetative) area like “The UP” or somewhere else and noted the rate-of-drop in temperature as the sun went down; as a kid, I don’t remember anywhere becoming as cold as quickly with the loss of ‘daylight heating’ as I saw it when in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (we had been cautioned about this ‘phenom’ too, so were prepared, still …)
.
Looks like whenever Real Climate gets a spike it comes from WUWT readers following a link, such as the post about the odd timing of RC’s post on 28th April 2011 about Dr Roy Spencer’s book, The Great Global Warming Blunder.
Incidentally in the UK there is a move to build up countrywide independent automatic weather stations. They are independently-run stations owned by individuals, schools, colleges, businesses etc. which upload weather reports automatically to a website several times a day.
http://www.weatherstations.co.uk/aws_map.htm
The fool Monty: In the end, EVERY major scientific body and EVERY National Academy of Sciences of ALL the industrial nations agrees with me. And NONE agrees with you. Makes you think doesn’t it!
The sceptic view is that:
* Carbon Dioxide has been increasing
* There is a greenhouse effect
* There has been a doubling of equivalent CO2 over the past 150 years
* There has very probably been about 0.8 C warming in the past 150 years
* Increasing CO2 alone should cause some warming
(about 1C for each doubling)
And you tell me that you, and every National Academy of Science deny this?
Ummm, Damian, why so few lifeboats on the Titanic (not enough for the number of souls aboard) if they didn’t believe it was unsinkable?
Hmmm?
(Actions of the designers/engineers/ship builder/the steam ship operating company all seem to concur *they* thought there was little risk of sinking, hence, they thought she was unsinkable went the further distance of saving money by not equipping the ship with a full complement of life boats?)
You are aware, are you not, of the internal design of the Titanic, with ‘sealable’ (or partition-able compartments) in the case of hull breech or rupture (usually a prelude to ‘sinking’ on a normal ship, so thought the designers and engineers of the Titanic) so as to ‘contain’ a rupture to a manageable size or compartment in the ship?
.
I just posted this on RealClimate – 5 bucks says it will never see the light of day.
“Has it ever occurred to any of you guys about the real reason why you are losing the argument on CAGW?
Well, to start with the original temperature data is almost always ‘adjusted’ beyond all recognition.
Historic temperatures are routinely lowered with every update, and all modern temperatures are increased. No acceptable explanation is ever given for this.
Climate models are regularly produced which have a pre-devised conclusion, namely “it is worse than we thought amd it is getting worse”.
The ‘scientists’ behind CAGW all suffer from the twin problems of being grant addicted and having huge over-sensitive egos.
Ask yourselves the question “Why can’t I ever find a geologist (private sector only, government ones have to toe the party line) who believes in CAGW? After all, geologists are the most knowledgable group about the past’s climate.
Why won’t you ever debate your ‘climate science’ in public with sceptics? The answer is simple: your leaders know your arguments will be shredded and your theories left in tatters.
That is enough for now, as this will never pass the moderators’ censorship pen. Try posting on a sceptic site and your comment, unless obscene, will always be published. RealClimate is famous for its censorship in keeping the faithful well away from impure thoughts like the facts.”
Damian says:
May 3, 2012 at 2:38 pm
“However, new and emerging science is suggesting that there may indeed be some connections between global warming and heat waves and between trends in mean precipitation and more extreme rainfall.”
Do you have any links for that? From what I’ve seen even the alphabetic nomenkultura that comprise the backbone of CAGW have issued after action reports that indicate no CO2 connection to any of the ballyhooed sequence of supposedly “extreme” climate events of recent times.
monty said:
“In the end, EVERY major scientific body and EVERY National Academy of Sciences of ALL the industrial nations agrees with me. And NONE agrees with you. Makes you think doesn’t it!”
heh. it makes me think you should resign as spokesman for EVERY and stick to what you know. meanwhile, please adjust the deck chairs.
Monty says:
May 3, 2012 at 2:26 pm
No it doesn’t…warming now is following CO2 rise. The role of CO2 in glacial/interglacials is probably as an amplifier of Milankovitch forcing (although recent paper by Shakun suggests this is complicated by bipolar seesaws). I suggest you do some reading.
In the end, EVERY major scientific body and EVERY National Academy of Sciences of ALL the industrial nations agrees with me. And NONE agrees with you. Makes you think doesn’t it!
In the beginning of EVERY scientific discussion, EVERY major scientific body and EVERY National Academy of Sciences of ALL the industrial nations has been WRONG about the “science”, the engineering, and the theory of EVERY SCIENTIFIC ADVANCE EVER MADE!
You go on to say “And NONE agrees with you. Makes you think doesn’t it!”
Yes, it does make one think that you (the CAGW theist community of tax-paid “scientists” using tax-paid computer programs created by tax-paid agencies accountable ONLY to tax-paid government agents who require CAGW-favorable answers to get 1.3 trillion dollars (US alone!) in additional control over worldwide energy and policies) are going to be proven wrong.
Again.
Monty ,
The Shakun paper has been discussed at length here . I suggest you do some reading :
http://wattsupwiththat.com/s=shakun
Here’s the link – hopefully I got it right this time :
http://wattsupwiththat.com/s=shakun
..and here was me thinking it’s because “deniers” are well organised and well funded? Funding aside, when alarmists say things like that, you have to question their organisational skills.