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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Remindsushow many years when its been a case of ‘ the time to do something is now or its to late ‘
should we not have been ‘to late ‘ many times over by now or is it like the rapture always ‘going ‘ to happen tomorrow?
Roy Spenser nailed it, it happened in DC not some remote outpost in fly-over country. In my area of Richmond we had a number of big (3-4′ diameter) oaks go down, power outages and the like. Home Depot and Lowe’s had the generators and chain saws out. Washington is 90 miles and a world away, but the damage looked worse and the power outages during high temps to record heat made it worse. Lot’s of noise from pols throwing public hissy fits over how slow the utilities are in restoring power. Not much mention that West Virginia was hit a bit harder than DC. This is a situation made for warmest propaganda. I’m surprised we haven’t seen more.
Awww, but children are so cute before they learn the difference between Carbon, Carbon Monoxide and Carbon Dioxide.
Love the logic: Hurry and pass global warming legislation while it’s still hot and before it gets cold again.
Do these folks really think there’s legislation that will stop droughts, hot weather, hurricanes, tornadoes, derechoes, and every other inconvenient weather event?
Skiphil says:
July 6, 2012 at 12:39 am
(quoting Joelle Gergis): “In a recent interview Professor Michael Mann (co-creator of the ‘hockey stick’ temperature reconstruction) referred to the ‘asymmetric warfare’ between trained global warming contrarians and climate scientists as ‘literally like a battle between a Marine and a Cub Scout’.”
Not hardly, Mikey. A slugfest between a Marine and a mugger who jumped out of an alleyway and sucker-punched him would be a more apt description…
Edohiguma says:
July 6, 2012 at 1:28 am
The guy has a BA in English. Why is he writing on science matters?
“Creative Writing” is a required course for a BA — his side needs people who can make stuff up…
OT
July 5, 2012
MSG-3 successfully launched
At 23:36:07 CEST (18:36:07 Kourou time), MSG-3 was successfully launched from Kourou, Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, on an Ariane-5 launcher to replace the ageing Meteosat-8 and secure continuity of the operational services from the geostationary orbit.
http://www.eumetsat.int/Home/Main/News/Press_Releases/820605?l=en
Pointman says:
July 6, 2012 at 12:32 am
He doesn’t even seem to have got the directive to call it “climate change” rather than “global warming.”
He probably doesn’t think “climate change” carries the dramatic weight of “global warming”…
Why would anyone try to compare Chris Mooney to anything other than a cumquat or maybe a celery stick. Ann Coulter may be a flame thrower but she is funny and She usually makes sense.
Mooney: “.. one of the most important issues to afflict humanity…”
Issue afflicting humanity? There’s something wrong here, some syntactical confusion. Maybe someone can parse this for us?
You understand, don’t you Fred, that we’re guests here and that it’s Anthony’s blog? We have no standing for saying he shouldn’t write about a given topic unless it meets our criteria. And we certainly have no justification for being rude to him.
WOW! He has a BA in English – clearly someone we should go to for science advise.
When did AGU cease to be a science org?
Its sad that the world has changed so much in my life time[ 68 years] my grand kids will grow up in a world you will not believe, if we let all the rat bags take control GOD HELP THEM
S Basinger says:
July 5, 2012 at 11:46 pm
Chris Mooney is the Ann Coulter of the left.
Ann Coulter is intelligent, witty, cute, blonde, and a lawyer.
Chris Mooney ain’t.
I read his post differently. I don’t see him arguing any facts or positing any truths. All I read is that he is urging his movement take advantage of the ignorance of the plebs and their conflation of weather and climate to make a push for his political goals. Once the weather cools again, they will have lost that advantage.
I see an overt call for cynical political manipulation. I read no claims to science or facts of any kind. I definitely see business as usual. Be careful how black your pot is before calling out his kettle.
Oh yes, that’s right. Every four years 3.5 million Americans go without electricity for a couple of weeks during record hot temperatures and an early summer heat wave. Regular as clockwork. Look it up – it only takes 30 seconds to Google.
(Don’t know what all the fuss is about. As everyone keeps saying, humans are adaptable. We’ll soon learn how to adapt to life without electricity during 120 degree summers.)
Frame Mooney’s piece and hang it on the wall as a horrible reminder of a brain not fit for use as a doorstop.
Anthony, I wonder if these extreme temps are really measuring the air temperature or if they’re being thermally effected by the dry grasses. I was taking some readings with my IR thermometer the other day when air temps were around 93 degrees. I got a reading of 124 on the cement, but more surprisingly was the 111 on the grass! And it had just rained heavily the previous night, so the ground was still moist. I bet if it hadn’t rained, the ground temperature would have been even higher. I know you’ve shown that cement can effect temperature readings, but when the grass is nearly as hot, I would think it could effect readings too. I think NOAA should require the grounds near the temperature sensors to be irrigated to minimize ground-induced thermal interference.
Boy, did I lose the plot. When I got down to the bottom and read
I started thinking another warm fall and low heating cost winter would be nice, what’s his problem?
Then I realized he was talking about gaining attention:
I think I stopped reading closely half way down. Oh well, busy day coming up.
Perhaps if the media had shown more responsiblilty and the warmist camp less political dysfunction people might still be interested in the discussion.
What is it with these people and Carbon Cap Legislation?
That simply doesn’t work. It won’t solve the reduction in greenhouse gases. Especially CO2.
Mooney has made a career of profiting from standing on piles of human corpses, killed by a hurricane or some other disaster, and using them (figuratively) as his dais to proclaim the truth of his political position. The fact that he is disappointed that others aren’t willing to join him in never letting a good disaster go to waste is just Chris being true to form.
–“The Intersection” at Discover magazine which covers science’s interactions with politics and other realms.
His specialty is merging the natural sciences and the social sciences. That’s a big deal and consistent with that internship with MIT that has a human society/natural systems simulation that, of course, only works if education can be used to changes human attitudes and values so that human behaviors are predictable.
The education model that tries to create that predictable human behavior by stressing a new “caring economics” also seeks to merge the physical and social sciences. The idea is that everything should “emphasize our interconnection with other people and nature.”
What Mooney is doing is trying to create an emotional sense that human behavior and current consumer values are causing these acute weather events and we thus need new values and attitudes. Because this weakening of natural science instruction goes back to the 90s and the AAAS Project 2061 there are plenty of people who are ignorant about genuine science and susceptible to visual imagery and emotion on this issue. That’s what the English major gets used for. To select emotive language that will stir feelings to impel action.
There’s even a term for that readiness to act– conative learning.
Mooney knows what he is doing and how it plays into consciously created pressure points in young people and young adults. That interconnection quote was from a book written about the time he graduated from Yale when it still looked like Clinton would get all the elements of radical ed reform in place in the US.
And Gore would put the rest in place. Instead it had to wait for Obama and that very expensive 2009 Stimulus Act.
Don’t worry about the warmistas, they’ve already started running toward “Climate Change,” as we all know. Colder is climate change too. They’ll just trump up some “peer reviewed” data showing it was all mankind’s fault anyway. Chris will be out in front cheering them on.
Watch the increasing number of “aerosol papers” coming out. That’s their ace in the hole.
I have heard stories from both of my parents about the 1930’s in NE Oreon and NW Kansas.
Both from Ranching/Farmig families. It was far worse than now. Far worse. Here’s a bit
about the Tillamook Burn. -In 1933 before there were Airtankers, Helicopters, and Smokejumpers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tillamook_Burn
Of course there are few corrleations to now (s)..
The problem is people like mooney either ignore or do not know history…
Why would it be good politics for Obama to try to push through Carbon-cap legislation now?
It’s guaranteed to cost him 10 points in the polls never mind the fact that one could paint him as not caring about the economy (another 5 points).
In other words, Mooney is not a political genius either.
It is very telling that he was appointed to the board of AGU. We know for sure that left-wing warmists dominate the organization now while it used to be, not surprisingly, dominated by geologists.