Even ad engines see the religious connection to global warming
Lately there’s been an ongoing series of rants in my local newspaper, the Chico Enterprise Record, from global warming activists posing as moralists with holier-than-thou views about how noble their world view is, and how terrible that of others who aren’t jumping on the bandwagon is. I’ve stayed out of the argument, because in this case, the levels of the arguments are not generally worth wasting time on, and I often think about the quote attributed to Mark Twain about “never argue with a fool, onlookers might not be able to tell the difference“.
Today though, that changed, with a letter so ridiculous, so repulsive, so condescending, and at the same time so hilarious, I thought it worth bringing to attention here. The screencap below made me laugh out loud today, not so much because of the ugly content, but because of the advertisement the ad engine decided to place next to the letter was delicious irony.
Heh. Priceless juxtaposition.
The citation of the Fugitive Slave Act is a nice touch don’t you think? /sarc As we’ve seen, if some people had their way, similar laws might be enacted for anyone who aids and abets a climate skeptic.
I would say that Patrick Newman’s letter to the editor suggests he is one of those “low information voters” we hear so much about. He appears to get his information from “approved” outlets, where he doesn’t get much more than talking points and platitudes for regurgitation elsewhere with a dash of faux moral outrage thrown in for good measure.
I wonder what Mr. Newman would say about Climate scientist James Annan’s new position on the issue where he says “the stubborn refusal of the planet to warm as had been predicted over the last decade, all makes a high climate sensitivity increasingly untenable.“. Would Dr. Annan be a “denier” too? Annan has come to realize that global warming has stalled, putting the theory to the test, while new papers being published point to lower climate sensitivity.
The break from consensus by Annan is notable and courageous, but also pragmatic. Data trumps theory every day of the week and twice on Sunday, and as even the IPCC seems to suggest with their graph of model projections versus actual data, the future doesn’t look so gloomy and doomy.
You can read the letter from Patrick Newman in full here. Anyone that wishes to respond, here’s the way to do so:
The Chico Enterprise-Record encourages letters to the print editor. They must be 250 words or fewer and should include an address and home telephone number for verification. Letters may be edited for length, taste, libel, and clarity. The Chico Enterprise-Record reserves the right to edit or reject any letters.
Send letters to letters@chicoer.com.
I’ll admit that about 1990, right after James Hansen’s famous 1988 address before congress (where they turned off the air conditioning in the room for “dramatic effect”, fearing their science was so weak) that I once saw the issue much as Mr. Newman did, less the angry condescension. Then I looked deeper, leaving my “comfort zone” then, and found the argument wanting.
My word this thread has become home to every religious fruitloop out there.
Newman is not wrong because he is a Humanist (possibly correctly described above as simply another religion, but missing the great sky fairy), he is wrong because what the poor need is cheap abundant food, cheap abundant energy and the rule of law. None of which are ever going to be achieved in an environmentalist utopia.
As for morality, that definitely does not derive from religion (and let’s face it the behaviour of religious leaders is all the proof you’ll ever need of that truth), it derives from having an effective police force, this latter truth being a throw away but important revelation from H L Mencken.
“We have barely begun to question the morality of the self-serving consumption that gives us pleasure today – and will cause untold suffering tomorrow”
Untold? Untold? Is he kidding? I wish it was untold! But these water melons make sure that we are told about this supposed future suffering every day of the week. And in a vastly exagerated way too.
Bertram Felden says:
February 4, 2013 at 2:12 am
My word this thread has become home to every religious fruitloop out there.
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Excepting yourself, of course…
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It is a classic method for advancing any agenda. Get a “Let’s you and he fight” going and the third party that instigated it can do as they wish while the other two parties are focused on each other.
I have noticed with the petty thieves I have known, the first thing they do when you notice your stuff is missing is point a finger at a third person to displace blame. Same concept.
Wamron says:
February 3, 2013 at 1:16 pm
Regarding slavery….
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Serfdom is just a different form of slavery. The Arab states still practice slavery but due to world pressure passed a “law” Abolishing Slavery. (Yeah right) We all know how those type of “laws” work. All you have to do is look at how the USA is refusing to bring charges against <a despite Heartland's attempt to lay charges. Peter Gleick is still walking because the prosecutor's office refuses to press charges for his impersonation, fraud, and defamation. See 18 U.S.C. 1343 for the law violated. Heck the Justice Department moved Friday [Jun 29, 2012] to shield Attorney General Eric Holder from prosecution after the House voted to hold him in contempt of Congress So the Admin. has swept ” Fast and Furious” under the rug.
If we do not have the rule of law in the USA and obviously we do not, then do you expect there to be rule of law in Arab states?
The Dark World of the Arab Child Slave Trade These are the neighbors and possibly the very same people Al Gore just sold his Current TV to!
Heartland’s Statement on the Gleick Affair:
Bertram Felden…whilst Ad Hominem (“fruitloops”) may be the indication of a lack of argument when directed at your opponents it is doubly dumb when directed at people who on the key topic at discussion are in agreement with you. Divide and conquer is what our opponents try on us, it is utterly idiotic of you to buy their division and use it on your own camp. Besides which, you again indicate the shallowness and infantile level of your conception of metaphysics (belief in a Sunday School level creator conception of God indicated by your “sky dragon”). To stereotype all who have metaphysical faith as like those who think in such terms is no better than an environmentalist calling you a “denier” and presupposing you are a gun-luvvin bubba with a fifty gallon beer-gut.
@Betapug says:
February 3, 2013 at 9:50 am
Hillary Clinton’s apology to the Chinese for America’s sins of consumption, beseeching them to shun the US path of error, her reassurance that “deniers” were primarily religious fundamentalists who could be appealed to with the biblical “stewardship of the earth duty” , make clear that we are engaged with an essentially religious movement.
The decline of traditional religious institutions leaves a void for all those drives and rewards that the new Church of Sustainablility (eternal life, at least for Mother Earth!) provides.
A visitor to an Evangelist Al Gore training, who witnesses the altar call where 12 year olds come forward to dedicate their lives to saving the planet, will recognize the drill….even before the collection plate is passed.
Well said Betapug, this is my feeling also. CAGW is fulfilling a religious need for people and the rise of this new religious movement coincides with the decline in more established religious congregations.
Richdo says:
“This right/duty of jurors, called nullification, is something I will not hesitate to apply should I ever be on a jury hearing a criminal case brought against a person for violating one of the unjust green rules or regulations.”
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John West says:
February 3, 2013 at 1:52 pm
Agreed……
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Both of you and others should checkout the Fully Informed Jury Association
That the US government is AGAINST having people informed of their rights and duties as Jurors speaks volumes.
Gail, the right not to convict someone is key to the jury system … but not the establishment wants anyone to know about.
E.g. Did you know that the American War of Independence started after American Jurors refused to convict Americans under British law? I think it was the “gillespie” case (but I’ve got the name wrong).
Did you know the Scottish verdict “Not proven” does not mean “you did it but we will let you off”. Instead “not proven” and “proven” are the two official Scottish verdicts. The third is “not Guilty” … which really means … “irrespective of whether the crown has proved the case we order the court to let you to go free.”.
These are just two instances where the establishment have tried to hide the real history, role, duties & power of the jury.
Patrick called himself a Utilitarian Humanist. That’s a religion. Isn’t it?
Doug Allen says:
February 3, 2013 at 6:31 pm
…… My friend’s angry that I’m giving a talk at our UU church later this month. Because he’s a friend, his email upsets me…..
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Doug If I were you I would reply with these links from Europe and asking exactly how many deaths he can attribute to CAGW that are not caused by higher fuel prices making heating and A/C too expensive:
DEATHS in the UK
A quarter of Brits are living in fuel poverty as energy bills rocket
Fuel poverty deaths three times higher than government estimates: Some 7,800 people die during winter because they can’t afford to heat their homes properly, says fuel poverty expert Professor Christine Liddell of the University of Ulster.
FOLLOW THE MONEY
The World Bank
The World Bank’s Robert Watson was head of the IPCC. The Copenhagen talks broke down thanks to the Danish text leak: a secret draft agreement .. hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank
The World Bank released a very inflammatory document: The World Bank 4 degree report in full here and summary for policymakers here.
All the while the World Bank is lecturing the West on the evils of CO2 it has MASSIVELY increased its lending for Coal Plants! GRAPH of World Bank spending on coal fired plants in the third world.
World Bank: Record sums were invested last year in coal power.. (Much of this is money from the USA tax payer BTW)
More than 1,000 New Coal Plants Planned Worldwide
Coal’s not dying — it’s just getting shipped abroad
The goal of Carbon Trading was to set up a worldwide trade in Carbon Credits (CCs), designed around a standard market mechanism, so that greenhouse gas producers could be penalised while greenhouse gas consumers could be rewarded. The easiest way to ‘consume’ CO2 is with trees so now The World Bank is deporting farmers form their farmland.
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If there is anyone who knows wind power it is the Dutch. This is what they have to say in a peer-reviewed paper: Electricity in The Netherlands: Wind turbines increase fossil fuel consumption & CO2 emission.
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The BIOFUEL RIP-OFF:
ADM profits soar 550 percent as ethanol margins improve
Cornell ecologist’s study finds that producing ethanol and biodiesel from corn and other crops is not worth the energy
ADM is the largest donor to both political parties:
Mother Jones:…whether the issue is possible price-fixing in Bulgaria or influence-peddling in Washington… no other U.S. company is so reliant on politicians and governments to butter its bread. From the postwar food-aid programs that opened new markets in the Third World to the subsidies for corn, sugar, and ethanol that are now under attack as “corporate welfare,” ADM’s bottom line has always been interwoven with public policy…
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THE TAX PAYER RIP-OFF
or The Broken-Window Fallacy
As Obama Promised: Energy Prices to Soon Skyrocket:
List: 36 Of Obama’s Taxpayer-Funded Green Energy Failures Money went into ‘investors’ pockets but corporate bankruptcy laws means taxpayers do not get it back out again. Investors in the know will sellout after the stock value peaks and before the bankruptcy.
The EPA and Department of Energy drastically underestimated the effects of the new EPA rulings. Many more plants are closing than anticipated. This means electricy prices will sky rocket and the electric grid will become unstable Impact of EPA’s Regulatory Assault on Power Plants: New Regulations to Take 34 GW of Electricity Generation Offline and the Plant Closing Announcements Keep Coming…
To keep the grid stable (Wind and solar DESTABILIZE THE GRID) electric companies will use ‘smart meters’ to shut down residential and small business electricity with ‘rolling blackouts’ so Factories can have a constant supply of power.
ERCOT is in Texas where there is a lot of solar and wind power:
Demand Response is the code words for Smart Grid. What they neglect to say is the way this is Demand Response works is with Smart Meters This allows residential electricity to be turned off so the system can be balanced.
The Department of Energy is all on board too.
And the Financiers are jumping for joy:
H. L. Mencken had it right. “The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.” or in this case make lots and lots of money off the backs of the poor.
The comment “the greatest good for the greatest number” just means these people are really Trekkies!!
“The Needs of the many out weight the needs of the few, or the one”, except they have twisted it around in their sick little minds and now it reads “The needs of the few out weight the needs of the many”
It really is sad, and I agree with others, I would love to find out how people such as Patrick live that they “Practice what they preach”
Bondholders stand in line with the other creditors. In this case they became owners of approx. 10% of the company. They thought they should have 58% of the company. From their perspective they did poorly. From another perspective they did better than they might have. The nature of bankruptcy is that someone is going to be shafted. That’s what happened to the bondholders for sure but it doesn’t look to me like anyone broke any laws.
http://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/bankrupt.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_Chapter_11_reorganization
Just been reading some British history recently, it is striking how in the 1600s and 1700s the tension between the “national” Anglican Church and the “nonconformist” churches was center-stage to the politics of the time. One author commented that the Anglicans used a sense of the “church at risk” to generate political support, and how nonconformists were pilloried as degenerate and a threat to the nation. This has interesting echoes with contemporary “consensus” environmental science (CAGW) and nonconformist “denialism”. The prevalent religions have moved on but human nature has not.
policycritic says:
February 4, 2013 at 1:44 am
@Gail Combs, I clicked on your Fisher links….
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It used to be at the link when I first came across it several years ago. Unfortunately, unlike a library the internet morphs over time. I would think the quote is in the book “Cry Out of Russia…escape from darkness”
Doug Allen says:
February 3, 2013 at 6:31 pm
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Doug, since this is a friend, why not gently point out that whenever anybody takes a stand on any issue, there’s always a chance that they’re going to be wrong. This isn’t an excuse to close your eyes and sit on the sidelines. Your friend is taking a stand as well. I’d try pointing out that driving up energy costs HURTS people in real ways, pointing out that the predictions aren’t being borne out by reality, and toss in the scandals (climategate, Annan’s recent mention of corruption, Lisa Jackson / Richard Windsor shenanigan, etc.) to demonstrate the possible corruption. Wrap up with the recent studies backing off on climate sensitivity estimates.
At the end of the day, there’s good reason to be skeptical, and considerable human misery would be averted if more people would make the effort to understand what’s really going on with this.
The bondholders had 27 billion in claims and the unions had 10 billion. The union got 39% for its stake, the bondholders got 10%. Uncle Sam got the balance for pushing in about 17 billion. Nice work if you can get it. On this issue of breaking laws, my opinion is the jury is still out on that; cronyism to legal transgression may be a fine gray line but I think it would be worth a good look-see. I have a recollection that one of the major bondholders was threatened (in a veiled way, of course) with pretty much endless inquiries by the IRS if they didn’t shut up and stop complaining.
email to letters@chicoer.com:
Patrick Newman (2/3/2013) wrote that “There are global warming deniers by the millions, just as there were millions that denied the evils of slavery.”
Mr. Newman disclosed neither the basis for his superior moral stance and beliefs about global warming nor the reason that there are millions of skeptics. The reason for the latter is that the earth has not been warmed at all by the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide for the last fifteen years. The monthly measurements of global mean temperature anomaly (departure from average for the period 1961-1990) as compiled at the Hadley Climatic Research Unit, UK plotted versus the monthly measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide at the Mauna Loa Observatory show a slight, but statistically insignificant, cooling trend for the past fifteen years (see attached graph). According to the NOAA State of the Climate Report 2008 (p. 24), “Near-zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations, due to the model’s internal climate variability. The simulations rule out, at the 95% level, zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more.” When the climate models that predict continued global warming have less than a 5% chance of being right, it is probably reasonable to be a bit skeptical.
http://i1244.photobucket.com/albums/gg580/stanrobertson/30yrdt-co2_zps8f6fd217.jpg
Thanks for the suggestions. If it were someone else like Patrick Newman that I don’t know the email wouldn’t sting. My friend has a heart of gold, but is probably, do to age and health, poor scientific literacy, and a lack of interest, unable to respond to to anything, chart or article, suggested. He’s a retired Political Science professor who has written a text book that is used in colleges which, like his email, calls global warming and climate change the “greatest challenge the world faces today.” I’ve been sharing with him (and others) the kind of articles and graphs suggested these past 5 years in an effort to educate. To call him an insufferable fool, as one of you does, is too strong. He is a dupe of the authoritarian academies of science which, with only one exception that I know of, gives him every reason to be an alarmist. There are millions and millions like him who are not bad people, but trust the authority of the scientific academies and see no reason to not trust them. He gets his information mainly from the NYT and Scientific American so I may send him the recent Revkin Dot Earth blog and parts of AR5.
Flip side- There is good news from my first experience teaching a course in global warming/climate change last autumn. I tried to emphasize climate science history, science, and data and to be entirely fair. We also looked at the high profile videos, starting with An Inconvenient Truth and alternating between alarmist and skeptical points of view. In the first half hour of the first class I administered a 7 question quiz and found out that no one- half of the 22 students were retired engineers and scientists- no one was was familiar with the concepts “climate sensitivity” or “attribution.” I would guess that most journalists and many or most scientists, those closely following climate science excepted, are also unfamiliar with climate sensitivity and attribution so really can’t be part of an informed discussion. The class was a great learning experience for all of us. I have that 7 question quiz on my blog and will be adding the course syllabus soon. The blog is mainly for my students this autumn, but feel free to look at it and suggest improvements in the quiz. As for my friend and his email, I’m afraid the situation is hopeless.
the faith-full knew he spoke of Reality.
The faith-full are a declining fraction of the American polity.
I have no need of faith myself. God talks to me everyday. But it could just be my mild schizophrenia. I might add that the advice has been uniformly good. So who knows?