Sigh. This is so bad… it’s funny. For the record, it is now official; Chris Mooney is a paid political hack disguising himself as a science writer. I’m going back to calling him a “kid blogger”, because no adult could have thought processes that give conclusions like this.
Chris Mooney | The Politics of Ice and Fire
The time to act on global warming is clearly now—right now. In a sane world, Congress would immediately take up carbon cap legislation, and President Obama would be giving a big speech on the issue—and pressing Mitt Romney to explain why he flip-flopped into climate skeptic land, moving in precisely the wrong direction on one of the most important issues to afflict humanity.
Moreover, President Obama would recognize this as a smart political move, because the hard-core deniers notwithstanding, public opinion on global warming follows the weather. It always does. Now, with the whole country wondering about the sweltering heat, about the wildfires and the derecho and the destruction, people are more than ready to hear that, yes, this is global warming, and yes, something has to be done about it.
And yet still, it is not happening.
I cannot overemphasize how dramatic a missed opportunity this is—because we know that even against the backdrop of an overall warming trend, the weather is extremely fickle, and so is public opinion. In late 2009, the year of ClimateGate, and then in early 2010 (of “Snowmageddon” fame), public doubts about climate change increased in association with winter weather—and that could happen once again as soon as the end of this year.
h/t to Tom Nelson
I find it amazing that Mooney can’t even do basic research on the derecho, like I did. 30 seconds with Google and he’d know that it wasn’t anything to do with global warming and according to NOAA’s SPC, that the Washington DC area and much of the eastern seaboard gets one about every four years:
So, why all the fuss over last weeks storm? Because it didn’t hit flyover country.
It hit the center of defective thinking, Washington DC. Hyperbolic ground zero.
I suppose though if you are a “hard core” fake science writer, you don’t look for such things. Somebody should take Mooney’s blogging computer away from him before he hurts somebody with it.
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Kid Blogger. Indeed. In lockstep, epistemologically, with Moonies from another time. Take me back to Barrytown.
RE: [The Carbon Tax starts down under] Spector (July 3, 2012 at 9:58 pm)
“… Of course, a dead horse.”
ROFLMAO…. he is an intellectual toddler. A logic-impaired moron.
Chris Mooney’s War on Science.
==========
I feel so “afflicted”. Idiot!
Chris could be reporting some really big news with all the different conditions going on throughout the planet such as:
http://www.wunderground.com/global/AA.html
This is your brain.
This is your brain on drugs.
This is your brain on global warming.
Any difference?
The DeSmogBlog project claims to be “the world’s number one source for accurate, fact based information regarding global warming misinformation campaigns.” . So they wouldn’t publish his article if it wasn’t thoroughly reliable and accurate. Any way, he looks such a nice sweet guy, we can be sure he wouldn’t deliberately mislead. But naïveté is possible. (hey, my iPad automatically put in the accents!)
He must be a Visual Basic programmer to enjoy repeatedly shooting himself in the foot like this . Still, I say long may he continue writing his diatribes: he undoubtedly has his followers, and they love this stuff. Everybody else will carry on regardless of his content-free ramblings.
Ya suppose that Chris reads WUWT?
Hey Chris!
If global warming is such a winning issue as you claim, then why do you suppose Obama isn’t seizing the opportunity to jump all over it? Is he too stupid to see the opportunity? Maybe he hasn’t been paying attention to the news and doesn’t know about the heat wave and the wild fires? C’mon Chris, you must be able to come up with some explanation as to why Obama is no longer beating the global warming drum at every opportunity? What’s changed?
If he ever found out he was made of Carbon and Oxygen, I’m sure he’d faint from fear of himself.
Who is this guy and why are you giving him pub?
Anthony, you got it in 30 seconds because of your base of knowledge and what questions to ask.
Greg Cavanagh says:
July 5, 2012 at 10:46 pm
If he ever found out he was made of Carbon and Oxygen, I’m sure he’d faint from fear of himself.
>>>>>>
Nah. He’s a whacko. I’d go with spontaneous human combustion.
When I read this on Desmog, I thought he sounded just like a little Joe Romm jr in training.
Who knows, maybe he’s worried his stupid books won’t sell if CAGW goes off the map completely.
This is funny, Chris Mooney demonstrates he’s as intellectually vacant as the rest of the lunatics. And, he demonstrates the willful ignorance of the leftists with such advocacy. I had the occasion to converse with another fellow who was stating the time was short, that we had to do something now else it will be too late. Now, I’ve never seen a definite measure of what is too late. But, given the 350. org, I’ll assume they mean to quickly decrease the atmospheric CO2 and that the doubling of the mythical 280ppm is well beyond some imaginary tipping point. It is fascinating that these intellectual giants such as Mooney have never investigated as to whether or not it could be a reality to limit the atmospheric CO2 with their proposed solutions to what they may consider a safe point. This was my response to the fellow I was conversing with. Sorry about the length, again. The italics mark the beginning and end of my comment at that forum.
Dallas, I hope you’re sitting down when you read this….. it isn’t just late in the day, that time has passed. And it passed several years ago. Rio+20 demonstrated this. I’ll try to explain….
First of all, as all can agree, if man is the cause of the increase of CO2, then it would take a globally unified effort to decrease it… or even keep it static. But, we won’t. At least not in the next several years. But, even if we did suddenly decide to start doing something about rising CO2 levels today, if the world stood up in a unified voice and stated, we’re going to start doing the things necessary to bring down atmospheric CO2, we’d still have CO2 exceed the magical 560ppm.
A recent study demonstrates that if we converted every electric gen plant to wind or solar PV, we’d still get a CO2 rise of ~ 50ppm over the next 100 years. This is because of the duration of CO2 and the fact that building the things emit CO2, and takes a lot of time. But, that’s only part of the solution. We’d still need to convert transportation, heating, and cooking. Of course, theoretically, we could use the renewables for most of this, but, then the conversion process takes much longer and so we’d probably see an increase closer to 100ppm. Even still, there has been no viable solution to the transport of goods via shipping, rail, and flight, so assuming some magical solution soon, we’re looking at further increases. Now probably closer to 125ppm.
But, all of this makes some fantastic assumptions. For instance, large electrical storage hasn’t been solved. And, of course, this is all predicated on the world having enough wealth to manufacture all of these things for everyone. AND, it assumes it can facilitate the needs. This, of course, would be a challenge. It has not been demonstrated that wind and solar can maintain well enough to facilitate mass production plants and commercial needs. This is required to effect the changes. In order to achieve these goals, wealth can’t simply be maintained, it has to grow in order to facilitate all of this conversion. Given the recent experiences of Italy, Spain, and even Germany, we see that the current approaches are severely lacking and very limited in the scale necessary.
Now, this brings me to one of my biggest peeves. The advocacy of the climate catastrophes have been the largest obstacle in finding an alternative energy source. They’re locked in their thinking and their near universal insistence to pursue technologies which can’t possibly work. They keep pretending that wind and solar electric gen are new tech. The first wind gen was made 125 years ago. It has the same problem now as it did then. We can’t store AC power and we don’t have storage technology to scale necessary for DC power. It is most likely that there’s another solution out there. But, we’ll never find it if all of our focus, funding, and research is wasted towards impossible technologies. If we let things naturally progress, it’s likely we’d find a workable technology within 50 years. History tells us this. But, we’ve wasted the better part of 30 years pursuing known failed solutions.
The reality is, given the challenges I’ve listed and others that I have not, we’re going to see atmospheric CO2 rise in excess of well over 600ppm even if we all agreed to “do something” about it. The physical constraints of time and scale dictate this. Socioeconomic and geopolitical realities push the rise even further.
Dallas, I understand your beliefs, but if its any consolation, a look back to when the alarms were first raised by Hansen et al, even then it was too late to do anything about it. Even if one believes the catastrophic change meme, the best course of action is to let nature take its course. The very advocacy of climate change has hindered the discovery of a viable solution.
Sit back, enjoy the ride. Breath deep that fresh air we call Freedom! Break free from the shackles of menacing ideas and understand that there is a higher purpose for humanity than simple security. Understand that it is our struggles which make humanity better and stronger. Embrace the notions of our forefathers. Humanity was never meant to be chained to the idea of accepting our limitations. It isn’t our destination which makes life worth living, it is that path we choose that does so. Global unanimity is oppression. Choice is Liberty. God Bless and Happy Fourth of July.
The study referenced is here….. http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/1/014019/article#fnref-erl410200bib5
All of these allegedly super smart sciency guys and they’ve never investigated whether or not their advocacy had any relation to reality or not. The fact is, the question of if they’re right has become irrelevant.(they’re not) This was by their own hand. What I propose now, is that a bunch of us fellows and ladies, create a database of lunatics like Mooney and Romm and Masters, and the rest. As each milestone is past, we should publicly mock them. Tweet, post, what ever. 400ppm …. laugh at them and say, “we’re still here you bunch of Malthusian Luddites!” 425ppm…. Nothing unusual has happened…”we’re still here you totalitarian Marxists!” Hand the database to our children and their children until the last of the alarmists have either died or faded into scorn and then obscurity.
Global warming hit Yunta, South Australia last night – MINUS 7.5C, the lowest overnight temp for 30 years.
Julia(r)’s carbon tax is working already and we’re only 6 days into saving the World.
“…public opinion on global warming follows the weather”
While it’s clearly sweltering in the US, it’s been a really cool damp summer in the UK, with June being the wettest for 100 years.
So using Mr Mooney’s logic; we should not act on global warming, we should not take up carbon cap legislation, we don’t need a speech from Obama or explanation from Romney, and we are moving in precisely the right direction.
Chris Mooney is the Ann Coulter of the left. His book “The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science–and Reality” is ridiculous.
Who is “Chris Mooney” and why should anyone worry a toss about what he says he thinks? Nobody the eastern side of “The Pond” has ever heard of him so he seems to be nothing more than “a legend in his own lunchtime.”
Why waste time on him?
Actually, I love to see Mooney and others like him in the public eye. Just spending a few seconds reading his drivel or watching him on TV as I did recently, demonstrates a strong correlation between their cultist views and psychopathy. Keep on truckin’ Kid, and watch the public leave you in droves.
Anthony,
No, he’s saying he doesn’t care. People are more likely to believe AGW alarmism when it’s hot. That’s all that matters.
Moony who?
Check out the weather in the UK today… Its raining so it must be global warming.
Oh .. there is also anuuder danger from GW triffids from Africa.
http://www.bik-f.de/root/index.php?page_id=154
Only a greeny can see the dark side of extra tree growth/primary production.
Elftone:
And whats this ? A visual Basic programmer shooting himself in the foot …repeatedly ?
Some of us have no choice.:-(
He’s worse than we thought !!