I’ve never done a double feature before where our Climate Craziness of the Week and Quote of the Week are one and the same. 350.org’s Bill McKibben gets this unique honor.
From the what universe does Bill McKibben live in department? While going on about heat waves, he comes up with the ultimate “I don’t understand science” zinger. How long before people stop listening to this guy? I would not have believed he’d be disturbed enough to write this if I hadn’t read it as a direct quote written by his own hand.
Hat tip to Tom Nelson.
Here’s the quote, its “Big Oil” irrationality on steroids:
…this industry, and this industry alone, holds the power to change the physics and chemistry of our planet , and they’re planning to use it. – 350.org’s Bill McKibben
I’m reminded of this:
Source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708473/quotes?qt=qt0198370
Here’s some excerpts from McKibben’s Rolling Stone article:
Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math | Politics News | Rolling Stone
warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere – the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe.
…
Scientists estimate that humans can pour roughly 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by midcentury and still have some reasonable hope of staying below two degrees. (“Reasonable,” in this case, means four chances in five, or somewhat worse odds than playing Russian roulette with a six-shooter.)
…”The new data provide further evidence that the door to a two-degree trajectory is about to close,” said Fatih Birol, the IEA’s chief economist. In fact, he continued, “When I look at this data, the trend is perfectly in line with a temperature increase of about six degrees.” That’s almost 11 degrees Fahrenheit, which would create a planet straight out of science fiction.
…
We have five times as much oil and coal and gas on the books as climate scientists think is safe to burn. We’d have to keep 80 percent of those reserves locked away underground to avoid that fate…Most of us are fundamentally ambivalent about going green: We like cheap flights to warm places, and we’re certainly not going to give them up if everyone else is still taking them. Since all of us are in some way the beneficiaries of cheap fossil fuel, tackling climate change has been like trying to build a movement against yourself – it’s as if the gay-rights movement had to be constructed entirely from evangelical preachers, or the abolition movement from slaveholders.
…Given this hard math, we need to view the fossil-fuel industry in a new light. It has become a rogue industry, reckless like no other force on Earth. It is Public Enemy Number One to the survival of our planetary civilization. “Lots of companies do rotten things in the course of their business – pay terrible wages, make people work in sweatshops – and we pressure them to change those practices,” says veteran anti-corporate leader Naomi Klein, who is at work on a book about the climate crisis. “But these numbers make clear that with the fossil-fuel industry, wrecking the planet is their business model. It’s what they do.”…this industry, and this industry alone, holds the power to change the physics and chemistry of our planet, and they’re planning to use it.
…
There’s not a more reckless man on the planet than Tillerson…In December, BP finally closed its solar division. Shell shut down its solar and wind efforts in 2009. The five biggest oil companies have made more than $1 trillion in profits since the millennium – there’s simply too much money to be made on oil and gas and coal to go chasing after zephyrs and sunbeams.
…Until a quarter-century ago, almost no one knew that CO2 was dangerous…if their college’s endowment portfolio has fossil-fuel stock, then their educations are being subsidized by investments that guarantee they won’t have much of a planet on which to make use of their degree. …we have met the enemy and they is Shell.
No, Bill, its you, and you may very well be insane. Get help.
This is a disappointing set of rants. In the phrase “change the physics and chemistry of our planet” the two sciences are clearly used in an identical manner and therefore are interchangable.
So why assume that “change the chemistry of the planet” means change some chemical attribute of the planet, which isn’t controversial, whereas “change the physics of our planet” refers to altering universal laws?
I know McGibben is an idiot, but so clearly are some WUWT readers.
“the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99”
What he is describing by his tortured use of statistics is actually, that the start of the 21st century is warmer than the average of the 20th.
Um, I would have thought that the odds of the 21st century being warmer than the 20th by chance are about 33% with 33% being the same temp and 33% of being cooler.
And that is before we examine what dodgy statistics he is using to claim the current temperatures are warmer (dodgy weather station siting problems leading to warming recorded as double what is in reality the case).
The man is clearly delusional.
Not the point. Grammatically, changing the physics of a situation is not the same as changing the LAWS of physics, and misquoting him is not doing your argument or disputation any favors.
“warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere – the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe.”
Since when has the climate changed by random chance? Doesn’t the climate change (in absence of man) due to natural forcings and feedbacks? So comparing man’s impact to climate versus chance is not rational and thus a straw man, not even a clever straw man at that!
‘We all like to take cheap flights to warmer climates’
Well if the planet got a couple of degrees warmer the cheap flights would be unnecessary.
UK today— rain and cloud temp around 12C. Forecast warmer, 16C, dry and sky clear so wrong again.
steveta_uk says:
July 20, 2012 at 12:50 am
This is a disappointing set of rants. In the phrase “change the physics and chemistry of our planet” the two sciences are clearly used in an identical manner and therefore are interchangable.
Then that means that, as two components of the same compound objective phrase, that each should make sense when parsed separately:
“…change the chemistry of our planet” is — chemically — possible.
“…change the physics of our planet” is — physically — impossible.
So why assume that “change the chemistry of the planet” means change some chemical attribute of the planet, which isn’t controversial, whereas “change the physics of our planet” refers to altering universal laws?
Because that’s what he *said*. “Changing the physics” does not mean “changing the physical characteristics.”
I know McGibben [sic] is an idiot, but so clearly are some WUWT readers.
Heh…
“BoobLove says:
July 19, 2012 at 11:55 pm
Anthony, use a better picture please. He’s nuts no matter what.
Beat the purpose to go down that road. Take your pick http://bit.ly/SKWNQe”
~ 0 ~
I notice that the images at the site above, now has the picture of Scotty used here included in images for Bill McKibben, with a link back to this post!
Made me smile broadly anyway…..
anarchist hate machine says:
July 19, 2012 at 5:36 pm
One must remind them, that not only can you not change the laws of physics, you also can not change the laws of economics.
Old joke: The Economics 101 prof was told that a student who had just taken his class was caught selling copies of his final exam Q & A to incoming students.
“Eh,” the prof replied, “no problem. The questions stay the same every year — it’s the answers that change.”
“It is like trying to start a movement against yourself…”
Billy, your inhumanity is showing. You seem to be crossing a dangerous line, wherein you start to believe humanity is the problem, and the cure is to become inhumane.
Humanity is not the problem. Humanity is the condition.
The condition contains some negative attributes, but also some positive ones.
The negative can be generally described as selfishness, and the positive can be generally described with the mysterious word, “Love.”
Some spiritual disciplines do actually “start a war against yourself,” however this charity begins at home. The ego you attempt to terminate is your own ego. It’s a big mistake to terminate everyone elses, before you yourself get your act together. It’s like you stay a crook, whilst telling others to be saints.
It is Love that really transforms society. For example, a mother may be selfish as she holds her baby, but her Love turns that selfishness into remarkable deeds of self-sacrifice.
Love is light. What you need to do, Billy, is to lighten up. Drop the darkness.
I guess I feel like a good rant….
jorgekafkazar says:
July 19, 2012 at 9:55 pm
“no other can legitimately replace it”
Perhaps that’s true of mathematicians, but in the computer programming world, early keypunches didn’t have many of the mathematically symbols mathematicians thrive upon.
This led Fortran authors to develop a description that doesn’t use mathematical symbols, this is used today in many languages. Other languages, notably C, usurped caret for the XOR Boolean function. For example, in Python:
>>> 2.**327
2.7340634059787649e+98
>>> .5**327
3.6575596521032799e-99
>>> 2^327
325
>>> 2.^327
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “”, line 1, in ?
TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for ^: ‘float’ and ‘int’
The C language is defined by ANSI standards, so there are communities that make it clear that caret is not for exponentiation, and that ** is. Sorry.
Last century, when I took math, I don’t think we used caret for exponentiation. We generally used superscripts, e.g. 2³²⁷ (I hope that worked). Perhaps you need to spend more time at the blackboard rather than typing Email in your mathematical dialect. 🙂
Is it just me or does Bill look a bit like Timmy from South Park in that bottom picture?
“..Given this hard math..”
He referrs to a bunch of ballpark estimates as hard math?
Really?
Coming soon to a worshipful NPR interview near you. . .
Your tax dollars at work.
/Mr Lynn
Hysteria at the cusp of madness.
McKibben really seems to feel the shells of truth hitting closer and closer. Therefore, he’s getting ready for a bare-knuckles, no-holds-barred, all-out “McKibben’s last stand” fight to-the-death for the survival of his Global Warming-fairy tale.
The Mogamboguru
Rolling Stone is it now? Rolling !@ur momisugly#&%^ Stone?? What a eminent and scholarly journal. At least we now know what it is that Bill McKibbens is smoking – and why he is so paranoid. /sarc
And the ‘money quote’ – got to love this – by who? Fatih Birol?? an ECONOMIST???
Gawd! I sure hope some kind moderator will fix my malformed blockquote tags. What ever happened to the ‘preview’ function by the way?
[there never was one . . kbmod]
w.w.wygart says:
July 20, 2012 at 8:41 am
Funny. I’ve had a preview function for months now. Is that because I have installed the CA Assistant firefox plug-in?
I feel it would benefit the world as a whole if McKibben’s views were widely propagated. Then rational people would realise what we’re up against.
A personal message to Mr McK: If a couple of people in medical gowns approach you; do not resist; just do as they ask as they will be there to help you.
Gary Pate says:
July 20, 2012 at 12:19 am
If Stanford holds a singularity summit, I guess the main question debated is whether the singularity will save us all before we get wiped out by the Ehrlich Event or not.
Mike Spilligan says:
July 20, 2012 at 8:56 am
Rational people have made their decision a long time ago: Resist warmism or become part of the gravy train riders. A good part of the solar cronies know that it’s all a scam. But it’s where the money is. So they continue peddling solar projects to EU protectorates who get a few billions in stimulus money provided they squander it on renewable energy projects. Like the 120 bn EUR that Merkel et al threw around 2 weeks ago during the last Euro crisis summit. Greece is technically broke but pays 36 Eurocent per kWh for new installations, guaranteed for the next 20 years. Go figure.
Dyrewulf says:
July 19, 2012 at 4:21 pm
“Wow… just wow. I have four big dogs in this house, two Germain Shorthaired Pointers, a German Shepherd, and a Blue Tick Hound, and they’re ALL smarter than that man….”
Get a couple of Chessies for comparison. They are extremely intelligent but rated as stupid since they are the most stubborn creatures I have yet to encounter. But no doubt smarter than this guy, and a lot of other people, as far as that goes.
We’ve been here before and on much better authority…
2.2 If science fails, ideology should do it – Mike Hulme
Hulme, (Professor of Climate Change, University of East Anglia) is arguably the UK’s most influential AGW scientist. He has an interesting view of political realities:
“Within a capitalist world order, climate change is actually a convenient phenomenon to come along.”
He dismisses ‘normal’ science because it produces the wrong answer:
“Self-evidently dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth seeking …”
See Anthropogenic Global Bias at eadavison.com
Hulme wants a ‘New Physics’ too.
Michael Tremblay says:
July 19, 2012 at 10:12 pm
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
George Carlin
I love this one because it is statistically quite accurate, assuming one believes that intelligence is normally distibuted. I already miss Carlin’s humor. And even those on the left hand tail of the normal distribution curve get to vote! God help us.
Where are the men in white coats with the full body restraints when you need them?
Ah, so what does happen if we put 2,795 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere, then?