Elevated from a comment by Doug Proctor November 14, 2013 at 10:00 am
I’ve been thinking about what makes the warmist-skeptic fight go on and on. What I have noted is the constant difference in how each side places its emphasis, and that this shows up in its speech. Specifically, the skeptics use declarative, as in “this will”, “this shall” or “this does”, and, of course, its negative equals. The warmists use conditionals, i.e. words like “could” or “should” or “may” or “might” that indicate undefined probabilities and, in truth, possibilities, things that are determinable only after the fact.
The use of conditionals after 25 years is remarkable (here I make a declarative statement). Despite all the models and claims of correlation/matching of observation, we still have no “does”, “shall” or “will” in the IPCC or other CAGW programme. The dangers and fears are in the distant future, discussed only as emerging from the present, but still only becoming obvious in some, never-close-to-today, tomorrow.
This is not an academic situation. The human world acts on what it thinks, and it thinks through words. If the words are confusing, its thoughts are confused and its actions are not necessarily the best. The Mainstream Media (MSM) is particularly prone to confusion from the way they are instructed, and prone to confusing the readership by the way they combine emotional response with a misunderstanding of what the use of conditionals in a discussion means. The MSM think conditionals represent scientific caution, but what they represent is scientific uncertainty. The extent to which they are used represents the consideration of the likelihood that what they think “will” come, actually comes.
From what I see, there are four different types of (Un)Certainty involved in the CAGW narrative: 1) Computational, 2) Emotional and 3) Representational and 4) Ideological. (There may be more, or more subtle versions of these, but these 4 are probably close to the general breakdown.)
The IPCC 95% type is Computational Certainty, that is the outcome as proposed by models is consistent with input data and mathematical relationships between identified factors. McKibben’s certainty is based in Computational Certainty, as in “Do The Math”. It could also be labelled “Intellectual” Certainty, as it is based on the idea that nature is deterministic enough, and we are smart enough and knowledgeable enough to figure out what is going on in a usefully predictive way. The application of the argument by ignorance is applicable to this form of certainty: if we can’t think there is another way, then it must be the way we say. While naively reasonable, and a reflection of the arguments Sherlock Holmes was claimed to use in solving crimes, how it is used by the IPCC adherents is actually a perverse misuse of what Holmes did: Holmes used the concept to bring to the table non-current, usually non-obvious solutions, which would be then investigated closely. The IPCC cabal use it to dismiss the non-current and non-obvious).
The second type, the Emotional Certainty, is what roots Gore, the IPCC Summary and the 97% Consensus concept. With Emotional Certainty, the statements say that we are personally comfortable with the work done and where it ended – with the understanding that not everything could be done, but we believe to be the most important parts were covered. Outside the workers themselves, this comfort derives from authority, the trust in credibility of certain socially recognized individuals or groups. The MSM in particular seizes on this particular form of Certainty (regardless of how they, themselves, perceive it). Anyone connected with the IPCC is credible, therefore I am comfortable with what they say. Personal investigation in this regard is unnecessary, and indeed is a “skeptical” activity for those still not convinced, as it suggests a “better” understanding can exist outside what one gleans from just the Summary remarks. The notable history of a President misleading America about the reasons for going to war, or a Bernie Madoff misleading investors as to what was happening to their money makes no impact on the credibility of other parties: that was then, this is now (and these ones).
Ideological Certainty is what drives the eco-green. Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Maurice Strong, David Suzuki, Friends of the Earth, the Waterkeepers, opponents of the XL Keystone pipeline: the arguments for CAGW are mere backups for other, anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist, pro-nature beliefs. This is not to say that those other beliefs are not valid, only that the principle position is not CO2-based warming per se. With Ideological Certainty, the certainty is that continuing the path we are on, the status quo, will cause socio- and environmental damage that is unacceptable (and may be catastrophic). The devil is in the general, not the detail: if we continue to consume and destroy – and fossil fuels are a fundamental part in this activity – the bad things will happen. Arguments about actual temperature sensitivity are not relevant. Whether we will experience 4 degrees or 1 degree warming by 2100, our societies are still on the road to ruin. It is this movement that must be stopped.
The fourth type of Certainty is Representational, in which what is projected is compared to what, at an initial state, is observed. This is where the skeptical position focuses. The skeptic wants to know the detail of what IS to happen and so looks to what HAS happened as a true indication (by pattern or observation) of how closely a predicted outcome has been matched by actual outcome. He does this so that he may respond – as he would say – “appropriately”.
The skeptic recognizes that responses are, and should be, proportional to the triggering event: a minor problem should not have elicited a large preventative measure if a small one would have sufficed. Energy – emotional, physical, social – is liimited and should be used wisely and sparingly if possible. To determine the details and hence the level of action that is appropriate, of course, one needs facts. And facts are not determined in policy summaries but in the field and the laboratory. Facts are not nailed down by consensus, i.e. group opinion, but by falsifiable testing. The skeptic, in his hunt for facts, is forced to read and question. Arguably having this desire for Representational Certainty is where the various skeptics or luke-warmers like Pielke, Lindzen, Watts and ourselves come in.
It should be noted that not all anti-CAGW narrative is driven simply by a desire for Representational Certainty before we act. Ideology, emotion and a narrow but intense trust in intellectual work also drive some skeptics. Certainly CFACT, Morano, the GWPF are seen in the eyes of warmists to be not just attacking the facts of the CAGW story, but the spirit: the obstructionism against CO2 reduction is perceived as anti-regulatory, pro-free market, pro-energy industry sentiments. Which, to some extent, is true. But all of us determine the course of our lives and support on the basis of multiple pulls and pushes, motivating factors that shift through time.
What makes the CAGW fight persist, IMHO, is that we argue about “Certainty” as if we are dealing with the same thing and each side is either foolish, perverse, or a paid shill not to recognize what each side holds. What I am saying in the above essay, is that we are not dealing with the same thing. I have listed four different aspects that lead to the decisions we make on supporting or not supporting CO2-related initiatives. The technical, dictionary-defined words are the same, but we argue because we are not using the same mental vocabulary.
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UPDATE: Maurizio Morabito (omnologos) observes:
Calvin and Hobbes explain why Climate Change alarmists are almost invariably rabid about it
This will change somes minds, it should anyway.
Money, Religion (Or Ideology if that gives the vapors), and Religiously Instituted ‘Obey, Sinner!’ governance.
We are not using the same mental vocabulary talking about lots of things. Many words that once had common and widely accepted meaning have now been redefined within certain political and social groups. Often, the meaning is inverted. For example, the new “liberals” oppose liberty to the extent that a whole group of people who still think liberty is important is now forced to adopt a new name. They call themselves “libertarians”.
Same with “progressives”, who fight tooth and nail against all progress.
“Nutritious” food is anything but.
I often feel I can no longer use many common words, lest I be misunderstood.
But the CAGW movement has used this terminology to cause so much destruction over the last two decades…
I’d like to point out one – which is the countless academics, scientists, professionals and other persons whose careers took major hits for not supporting AGW. Trashed, harassed, and even fired in many instances, how do they get whole again ?
Please, I ask for a moment of silence for those who became collateral damage to a movement based on a false concept and marketed via deception. Whatever AGW was when this all started, it became an agenda driven religious-like cult movement that has left a trail of damage worldwide.
A Cat would never be a warmunist!
The latest conditional bombshell (heard on BCC radio last night):
“Up to 30% of species in the world’s oceans could be at risk from extinction by the end of the century from potentially increased acidifiaction.”
Parse out the conditionals at your leisure.
“A cat would never be a warmist!”
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it and stop there lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again and that is well but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.
Mark Twain
Some people seem to be “wired” to look at almost everything from the perspective of “feeling”and reason is not considered.
These people will NEVER be convinced by logic.Their language is emotion and the only way to “reason” with them is to speak in emotional terms.
“Logical” people have to learn this “new “language to win ANY arguement with them.
What makes the warmist-skeptic fight go on and on?
1. It’s a political doctrine and an integrated past of UN Agenda 21 now executed by the the EU and the USA aimed to enforce measures and regulations that will strangle our economies, our prosperity, our jobs, of freedom and our futures, a policy that already kills people by the thousands if we are honest and look at the effects of the bio ethanol scam hiking food prices triggering the food riots in NA and the Middle East which is now burning. The Palm oil scam diving our last remaining primates into the zoo. etc. etc.
2. There is no Open Process, IPCC works in a vacuum and can’t be influenced
3. There is NO Open Debate
4. The MSM is biased in it’s reporting, in many cases no contrary opinion are tolerated
5. All debunked arguments continue to be recycled
6. The climate models stink and the various data sets, surface stations etc are tampered with, read Lies & FRAUD.
7. The introduction of climate change policy in the USA (and before that the EU) has been taken out of the democratic process and now is introduced and enforced by Presidential Decree
8. All that the warmists have left is to take perfectly normal weather events and blow them out of propostion like they recently did with the Typhoon that hit the Philippines.
8. The authorian trend will now continue in Warsaw.
Forget all about the story above because it is utter BS.
And then there is the passive co-conspiracy of those that are neither warmist nor skeptics (the large majority).
AGW.
As with all doomer porn, always in the future tense, never the present.
Wait until the earth gets cold!!!
The main reason the fight is still on is because many of those with political power are shoving rules and regulations down our throats when we know they aren’t necessary. This makes everything cost more and costs jobs. Rather than just the believers going primative they want us all to suffer. But make no mistake, rich people and the political leaders will not suffer from higher costs, though they are apparently suffering now in Australia because the voters saiud enough is enough.
Get completely rid of the green rules and regulations and subsidies and defund all climate studies and the problem will miraculously disappear. This seems to be where Abbott is going and all the power in the world to him.
The attack on the English language is intentional. It is a much larger issue than CAGW, but, then, any skeptic worth their salt already knew this. For the ideologues posing as scientists, this is as useful as the conditional words. They refuse to make their meanings clear because if they spoke plainly they know they’d be rejected as people trying to resurrect Stalinist Marxism.
The conditionals also serve another purpose, when one uses words such as “would”, “could”, “should”…etc, the implicit statement is that you’re open to other possibilities. It gives an air of moderation. Of course, we all know that an alarmist is anything but open to other possibilities, they are 100% certain of their unstated positions and goals. And, of course, they’re anything but moderate. They are extremists of the worst kind always parading panic and hyperbole to advance their misanthropic causes.
Consider their insistence of a consensus. The damned thing has never been defined! (again with the ambiguity) but, they insist 97-98% all agree …… on something which has never been clearly stated. How stupid is that? How much more stupid is it that people accept that babbling nonsense? Well, they accept it because they want it to be real, and in a leftist mind, desire is equal to reality. It’s why they can get away with constantly altering empirical data. And, get away with it, they did.
I’m a criminal investigator, not a scientist. But my training and nature compel me to question any proffered theory, especially when it effects my pocket book. This is why I’ve never bought into the CAGW. I’ve always wondered,’ where is the evidence’? What is the mechanism? Haven’t we been warming ever since the last ice age, etc. Then when I did a little research and started to read WUWT, I began to see more clearly the absence of proof for CAGW and the ever increasing data showing the opposite: Things like the absence of warming in 17 years, the increasing ice in the Antarctic, the upswing in Arctic ice, and much other informative and even entertaining information from articles written by Anthony and other real scientists on this blog.I admire the rational thinking and argumentation. The marshaling of facts and drawing to solid conclusions. The absence of name calling and histrionics. The empiricism, if you will, the thoughtful contemplation of evidence. ‘ Following where the evidence leads’ is an expression in my line of work. I can’t necessarily assume that ‘ the butler did it’ when the evidence leads elswhere. Lol. lMy doubtin the CAGW theory increased after outed emails being exchanged between some the the leading scientists supporting AGW. These emails showed these AGW scientists’ mendacious and duplicitous nature in hiding information from the public and presenting false information to the world about Global warming or as they currently put it ‘climate change’. The revelation of their efforts to malign and discredit scientists who disagreed with them didn’t enhance their credibility in my eyes. . They commited crimes of omission and commission in my view.
I guess that the above falls within a demand for representeational certainty. But my questioning, and cynicism of the Warmists, I must admit, is also emotional and ideological. I happen to be a conservative minded person. I am reflexively suspicious of policy, theory, etc offered by the left. Now I am open to being dissuaded by being shown proof of CAGW. But all I’ve seen are broken hockey sticks, faulty computer models and ….no warming.
A bit too much linguistic reductionism for me. reminds me of those who think they can solve Palestine coflict lingustically. in this case, with AGW, I’m with Hume: ‘reason is a slave to the passion’
Reminds me of Edward deBono’s lucid primer on the subject:
“Four ways to be right, five ways to be wrong, five ways to understand”
a good short read for anyone who wonders why two sides never agree very well. Illuminating examples of how people think.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1211068.Practical_Thinking
R. de Haan should have done this post – It was quick, simple and straight to the point of how this all is about.
A major divide is over who/what you worship. e.g.
Those “pro-nature” require subservience of progeny and wealth to keeping nature sacrosanct and thus demand mitigation of anthropogenic climate change.
Those pro stewardship, evaluate actions in terms of a prudent return on effort before their Creator, and thus adapting to climate change while caring for the poor, widow and orphan. e.g. see The Cornwall Alliance
This is reflected in the pragmatic perspective that mitigation costs 100:1 more than adaptation.
As Christopher Lord Monckton observes, “If the If the cost of the premium exceeds the cost of the risk, don’t insure”
This quote explains why the alarmist cult will never be persuaded by scientific facts and evidence:
My research suggests the fight between the warmists and the skeptics rages on because the members of both camps are persistently guilty of the same logical error. The error is to draw a conclusion from an equivocation. By logical rule, one cannot draw a proper conclusion from an equivocation. However, one CAN draw an improper conclusion. By drawing improper conclusions from equivocations, warmists and skeptics draw opposing conclusions from equivocations that are thought by one side or the other to be true but that are logically unproved.
An “equivocation” is an argument in which a term changes meanings in the midst of this argument. That a term changes meaning yields an argument that looks like a syllogism but isn’t. Thus, while the conclusion of a syllogism is true, the conclusion of an equivocation is unproved but seems to people who are deceived by it to be true.
The equivocation fallacy is supported by the existence in the language of global warming climatology of terms that are “polysemic,” that is, that have more than one meaning. Among the polysemic terms are “predict,” “forecast,” “model,” “science,” “scientist” and “scientific.” Through the use of these terms, skeptics join warmists in glossing over errors in the structure of global warming climatology that prevent logically proper conclusions from being drawn from arguments. Thus, the fight between the two sides never ends.
SOB, reason without emotion can be a very dangerous thing, and vice versa. Neither of them have a particularly good track record in isolation.
Personally, I find exactly the same sort of conviction amongst reasonable, emotionally balanced, respectable people on both sides of the fence (and also of course from the occasional irrational bigot on eitherside).
When something is basically uncertain, as in the existence, nature or affiliation of our various Gods, people do tend to take opposing sides and even extreme positions, each in utterly similar ways, and each believing themselves to be rational and correct.
It would make far more sense just to adopt the truly rational: ‘I actually don’t really know just yet..’, but an appetite for vigorous controversy and opposition seems to be inherent in human nature, and often with far more productive, diverse efforts and outcomes, when not actually hideously destructive (for the Lilliputians, in their terrible sectarian controversy over which end of the egg to break when eating one’s breakfast).
But nature will have the last say of course. (And we may die and simply rot. Who knows?)
Keith Kloor at least recognizes a dichotomy and Anthony Watts’ high profile: The New Normal: Climate Ambulance Chasing
James Sexton: “The conditionals also serve another purpose, when one uses words such as “would”, “could”, “should”…etc, the implicit statement is that you’re open to other possibilities.”
If you’re determined to dialogue with such folks, just take the contradictory “would not,” “could not,” “should not” and proceed quite plainly without remark. Same thing as what they’ve said, but they pop a gasket trying to get around it.
The second type, the Emotional Certainty, is what roots Gore, the IPCC Summary and the 97% Consensus concept.
Herein lies the root of the continued arguing. When emotion, not reason, is the basis for a position on any subject, no amount of rational counter arguments have any effect. Thus, the emotional effect of typhoon Haiynen’s death toll is used to bolster CAGW claims while rational statements that the data doesn’t support any such claims are ignored.
I suspect the only way to make headway against the warmist argument is by touting the emotional effect of expected human suffering as a consequence of the warmists’ agenda. Point out that people will suffer when they cannot afford to heat their homes in winter. Point out that people will starve when food production becomes limited by use of livestock to work the land once there is no fuel for tractors. Help people see that any suffering that MIGHT result from continued CO2 emission will be far less than the guaranteed much greater suffering that will result from stifling energy production.
Pleas based upon scientific fact or expected depression of the economy make rational sense but have no effect on the outcome of the ongoing argument. Perhaps only expected human suffering will.
SR
The fight must continue. This is not something we can meet in the middle ground about. Our early passiveness about green ideals has allowed the green monster that stalks the Earth now. One side gives an inch, the other takes a mile.
The Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warmers WILL NOT STOP until our nations are destroyed and millions killed to purge the Earth of the cancer they think is Man. That means we can not stop either until the work is done and this sham is shown for what it is.
I think your post is very good and very accurate, except that finding and talking in the same language will not solve the problem. The lying must stop. The emotional blackmail must stop. The destruction of the environment, of industry, of society and of civilization must stop.
Above all, hatred of the human animal must stop. Teaching the next generation – and the next and the next – to fear and despise the very technology that gave us extended life, health, riches, comfort and enjoyment, seriously Must Be Stopped.
I’ll go out on a limb here but I think the majority of the climate scientists are probably on their last nerve with the IPCC, the UN and politicians in general (Ok -maybe not Mann who seems to thrive on being a media whore). If you disconnected the funding from the political agenda the debate would be more civil and productive. In Biology, HIV funding while somewhat controversial at the time let us learn about the immune system in greater detail. That research led to vaccines for cervical cancer, antivirals for Hepatitis C, and new drug therapies for cancer and autoimmune disease, as they say not to shabby. I think if the politicians backed off and let the real scientists do the work the benefits will be similar. I’m pretty sure the “deniers” would be the first ones to back the funding as they have an underlying interest in understanding the climate better as well.
Mr Proctor. Thank you for your erudite and insightful piece. I think many of us could use your framework in understanding those we come across that have these as their prism through which they perceive. It has certainly clarified things for me.
I am dumbfounded on a frequent basis by them. Now I understand a bit more about the orientation that would create their illusion.
A good example is an editorial I read yesterday on the Typhoon, which admitted that there might not be any link to climate change but that “politicians should agree that polluting the air or our waterways and oceans isn’t good for people or for the planet.”
Therefore never let a good crisis go to waste? The end justifies the means, as long as its a Noble Cause (which I define).
I see Sweet Old Bob got the same point in while I was typing… there is something to be said for short posts!
SR
Mind you, I do think the ‘Noes’ tend to win on points. But then, I am lazily guilty of reading very little on the subject apart from what I come across on this website, so I suppose I would think that.
Which tells me that I find the whole thing more of an entertainment and an education than a concern.
In fact I only found this website several years back because I was doing a bit of recreational research into the childishly thrilling (to a geologist) subject of Ice Ages, and found myself at an excellent WUWT article by Frank Lasner, and have come here ever since for similar good fare.
Apart from which, nothing much has changed round here for the past 40 years. The tide still goes in and out to the same point. The summers are hot and long and the winters are wet. Occasionally there is hail, the threat of a cyclone, or a dead whale washes up on the beach. Politicians, TV and newspapers remain mostly crap. House prices, power bills and the quality of coffee and cars goes up, and the cost of garden furniture, electronics and power tools goes down. Yawn..
Come on, when’s the next ice age? They promised me one at school!
The essay opens with an amazing bit of Orwellian doublespeak. Astonishingly the author claims that skeptics speak in certainties such as “this will”, “this shall”, “this does”. Talk about turning the Buddha on his head! In reality the skeptics look at the data and the empirical evidence and suggest that something else might be going on. The alarmists on the other hand have no empirical cause and effect data but rather look into their crystal models and pronounce the end is nigh. I suppose the concept of four types of uncertainty has some utility in sorting out this mess, but to me the concepts of cognitive dissonance go a lot further in helping to understand what is going on. The genetic predisposition of people to clump together over any common belief, however preposterous, is also clearly at work. Certainly you don’t have to look very far to find ample evidence of groups of people including scientists, believing things that are later shown to be silly. It is disingenuous in the extreme to try to characterize skeptics as the declarative group and it was very hard to read beyond that point.
Their biggest weapon:
Calling those who do not accept the premise of catastrophic man made global warming
“Climate Change Deniers”
Which of course, is their biggest lie.
What makes the CAGW dispute persist, beyond the benefits of the funding involved for being an advocate, is the fact that in the 70s ecological marxism arose as a theory to provide an alternative crises to justify social, political, and economic transformation.
And the theorists knew they needed to use necessity to sell the transformation away from consumerism and individual choices.
I remain stunned by the materials that exist that openly lay out precisely that.
Robin,
That’s why I was surprised to find Stewart Brand (Mr “Whole Earth Catalog”) is now pushing nuclear power with a will.
I would agree with much of what Doug has written, but only in so far as it relates to the past. It does miss out a small group, those supposedly motivated by “Computational Certainty” who chose to fudge the figures (post 1990) to promote what they knew was a failed hypothesis because they were driven by “Emotional Certainty” to believe the ends justified the means. Some of the scientists supporting the IPCC clearly knew prior to 1995 that adding radiative gases to the atmosphere would not reduce the atmospheres radiative cooling ability.
However the situation of the past has changed. Those continuing to push AGW propaganda now have an air of utter desperation. Most of those once motivated by computational certainty know the hypothesis has failed. A great number of those with little scientific understanding once motivated by emotional certainty are realising something is very wrong. More and more fellow travellers are coming to the realisation that this is going to end very, very badly for them.
It is only now the fellow travellers are contemplating the inevitable collapse of the AGW inanity and the consequences of their actions. They have realised far too late the danger posed by the Internet. It is not just that the Internet allows a democracy of ideas and communication to bypass the control the fellow travellers have over institutions and the lame stream media. The Internet remembers. Forever. The motivation of many of the fellow travellers could now be simply described as blind panic.
The reason the debate keeps on is because the fellow travellers have no exit strategy. In the age of the Internet there is no way out. In the past a compliant lame stream media could be used to engineer an exit strategy, but those days are gone. The lame stream media are no longer the gatekeepers of opinion or records. The forth estate has become the fifth wheel. All the old tricks such as “walkback”, “issue fade and replace” and “snowstorm” are pre Internet, they don’t work any more.
The past motivations of the AGW fellow travellers are not their current motivations. They are no longer fighting to “save the planet”, they are now fighting to save their own hides. From one side of the planet to the other, the Professional Left have gambled everything and lost. The shrieking panic as they try to flog the putrefying remains of their dead stalking horse back to life is now just adding to the crushing weight of their shame. It may be grotesque, but in the face of the permanent record of the internet the fellow travellers have no better plan than delaying the inevitable.
Larry Kirk said @ November 14, 2013 at 4:18 pm
Me too! Then I studied geology and discovered we have been in an ice age for many millennia 🙂
What makes the warmist-sceptic fight go on and on?
To my mind, the primary reason is simple: It is because AGW and CAGW are used interchangeably by those promoting CAGW. The science of AGW is reasonably well established, and sceptics on the whole accept the basic principle of the science, but observe that it does not support CAGW. Those promoting CAGW draw no distinction between AGW and CAGW. For example they use surveys of opinion on AGW, such as Doran and Zimmerman (2009) to claim consensus on CAGW.
Doran and Zimmerman (2009) (http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf) asked 10,257 Earth scientists the question “2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?”. 82% of the 3,146 respondents answered “Yes” to this question. Obviously, the result hinges on people’s understanding of “human activity” and “significant”. Many people do believe that human activities other than the use of fossil fuels, such as land clearing, do contribute to global temperature. Many people would consider any contributing factor above say 10% to be significant. Many or even most CAGW sceptics would answer “Yes”: to this question if they were confident that their answer would not be misused. Yet somehow the paper has been used to “show” that 97% of scientists support CAGW.
This misuse of AGW is at the core of the argument. CAGW sceptics are labelled “anti-science”, “d*ni*rs”, etc, because CAGW scepticism is seen as disputing AGW. Any AGW consensus that can be found or concocted is portrayed as CAGW consensus. Greenies and left-wing politicians find CAGW very helpful. The MSM will not or cannot distinguish between AGW and CAGW. And so the issue is kept confused and the fight continues.
Fight? If one means the angry blabber between the right wing loons and the left wing nuts, both share a unitary interest in not really wanting to follow the money. They’re emotionally wedded.
I think you missed the biggest certainty of all, and that is the self interest certainty.
Al Gore believes his drivel? Nonsense. He invests heavily in oil and fracking companies, and has bought a monster house beside the sea he insists is going to rise up and drown it. What Al Gore believes is that there is a buck to be made and he is going to make as many as he can. Let’s take a walk through all the industries and all the people who supply goods and services to those industries that benefit from their self interest certainty:
Wind mill manufacturers
Solar panel manufacturers
Electric car makers
Biofuel companies
Power utilities. Yes! They are forced to purchase high cost green power which they can then sell at high cost to consumers and make more money in the end.
News media. You betcha. There’s money to be made telling everyone the world is going to end. Nobody wins a Pulitzer prize for reporting that it is a nice day and nothing remarkable happened.
Oil and Gas companies. Yes! Coal is near 100% carbon so gets hit the hardest by emission controls. That capacity has to be replaced, and “green” can’t even come close, so the power generation companies turn to gas. That raises the price of gas, which makes oil more competitive in certain verticals.
Financial industry. Big winners, the more carbon trading there is, the more they get to skim off the top trading it.
Government. Huge winner. Now they have a tax they are being “forced into”. Perhaps the first ever example of a broadly popular tax.
That’s just off the top of my head, my point being that there is a very long list of people who benefit from playing the tune, even if inside their own heads they think it is way off key.
I ended up at this site, of my own free will.
May God help me, cus I’m now well informed 🙂
R. de Haan, well said.
There also is a perversion of word meanings. The prime example is “unprecedented”, the use of which by alarmists eliminates from consideration contrary facts that occurred prior to some usually vague, unspecified point in time. “Today’s warming is unprecedented”, but not stipulated, “since the end of the Little Ice Age” or, more accurately, “since the end of the 1930’s heat waves.” Or “sea level rise is unprecedented” (since the end of the Little Ice Age). “Ocean acidification is unprecedented” (since the Eemian interglacial 125,000 years ago). We learned what to expect in “1984”, and now we’re post-1984, and we’re getting it. “The past has no precedents, so the present is unprecedented.”
From the beginning the ipcc lied, if they told the truth none of this @#%&& foolishness would
Have seen the light of day. Money and power brought on by fear is the real story.
O,t. My town library is having a “climate reality global warming” talk hosted by ,drum roll please..
….”climate reality leadership corps”personally trained by Al bleebing gore. ….stay tuned. I will be there . Suggestions welcome
The only reason the “warmist/skeptic fight goes on and on” is because we have a free internet. The chances that this will continue if the internet is handed over to the UN (or any of its agencies) are slim to none.
The presence of a few good blogs has had an enhanced effect not explicable in terms of the billions which are spent on the propagation of AGW. I don’t understand it, when I consider the funding, status, and institutional weight behind the manipulation of science. The conversation will continue as long as there is freedom of speech, of expression, and the right to peaceably assemble. Other than that, what else do skeptics have but all that personal magnetism.
Slightly off topic to this thread, though on topic to several posts to this thread and others:
The claim that there is no rational, scientific basis for a belief in God is in itself an emotional claim, and it reveals that the claimer has not made a rational inquiry into the possibility of God.
But if a belief in God actually was irrational, believers would not be deterred by that claim.
So, save such claims for some other blog, please. I prefer not to read posts by those who don’t know what they are talking about.
SR
Konrad-
the past motivations as I describe them are the current motivations or I could not track this stuff going footnote to footnote having started in education. Tracking why the discrepancy between the declared goals and what was really going on.
Nice job Doug!
I see things a bit differently with respect to uncertainty that drives the debate. I think 4 is not enough.
On one side>
Funding
Ego
Ideology
Guilt
I can see the unimaginable thought clouds popping up in their heads over the last few years. Hint Josh?
On the other side >
Computational
Observational
Verificational ( is that a word?)
Documentational (¿)
Quit simple really 🙂
Steve Reddish: “The claim that there is no rational, scientific basis for a belief in God is in itself an emotional claim, and it reveals that the claimer has not made a rational inquiry into the possibility of God.”
Here’s some short-bus episemology for you. Let’s say my ex-wife exists and that she called me yesterday. Now take the list of commitments you need to make to accept that as true. Now ask me to demonstrate them for you.
I cannot, whether it is true or false. And that’s what prevents both extelology and godology from being disciplines in science. Though, if you’ll let me fake some things, we can get both in their on the same level of credibility of climatology.
The difference between bullshit and knowledge isn’t what’s true. It’s what you can lay down and demonstrate after having claimed that it’s true.
So after Chicken Little shouting “The sky is falling” for 3 decades, we should accept its delusions because it “could fall”.
The arguing goes on because an orchestrated litany of lies, has been propagated by a group of secular anti humanists, for purposes other than those they pretend to espouse.
I resent being imposed upon by weak mined do-gooders.
I argue regularly with an alarmist on a football site. His frothing denunciations are amusing. There’s no changing his mind though…
Konrad says:
November 14, 2013 at 4:37 pm
*
Konrad, that was an excellent comment. You are right, this thing is self-destructing. I sometimes forget that as the juggernaut thunders on. I particularly like your last paragraph:
“The past motivations of the AGW fellow travellers are not their current motivations. They are no longer fighting to “save the planet”, they are now fighting to save their own hides. From one side of the planet to the other, the Professional Left have gambled everything and lost. The shrieking panic as they try to flog the putrefying remains of their dead stalking horse back to life is now just adding to the crushing weight of their shame. It may be grotesque, but in the face of the permanent record of the internet the fellow travellers have no better plan than delaying the inevitable.”
Thank you.
Gene Selkov says:
November 14, 2013 at 2:47 pm
“For example, the new “liberals” oppose liberty to the extent that a whole group of people who still think liberty is important is now forced to adopt a new name. They call themselves “libertarians”.”
The progressive socialists a.k.a. liberals are currently starting to co-opt the term “libertarian”. As they own the media this will succeed. It already has in Germany with the “pirate party”.
And you had that pseudo-libertarian vote-splitter against Cuccinelli in America. He’s on the record saying he’s sceptical about reducing taxes and all that von Mises stuff etc. i.e. a “liberal” plant.
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2013/11/14/the-pirates-are-here/
“the arguments for CAGW are mere backups for other, anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist, pro-nature beliefs”
Replace ‘pro-nature’ by ‘anti-human’. There is a subtle difference. The anti-human part is real, but the pro-nature part is only a romantic ideal for most.
Konrad says:
November 14, 2013 at 4:37 pm
“The past motivations of the AGW fellow travellers are not their current motivations. They are no longer fighting to “save the planet”, they are now fighting to save their own hides. From one side of the planet to the other, the Professional Left have gambled everything and lost. ”
They still run the USA and the EU and will take them down with them. That is, the parts that are still standing.
Steve Reddish says:
November 14, 2013 at 5:27 pm
“Slightly off topic to this thread, though on topic to several posts to this thread and others:
[…]
So, save such claims for some other blog, please. I prefer not to read posts by those who don’t know what they are talking about.”
Unfortunately I can’t really decipher which “such claims” you mean; and whose comments you would not prefer to read, and who it is that you think does not know what he is talking about, and what that what is.
You could be right about this, Doug.
R. de Haan says:
November 14, 2013 at 3:13 pm
Exactly!!!! Look at some other scientific endeavors currently in progress. Can anyone exercise control over the masses if Cassini makes some kind of major discovery? If water is found on Mars will that change any economics or politics here on Earth? Do new theories about the galaxy cause any one or any group to demand social changes? It is when politics enters the fray that gives rise to such a great rift between sides of a debate. And that is because we all know that politics is the major influence on the world we live in and politics is based solely on ideology.
Unfortunately Dirk is right. Cagw is a runaway train. Co2 is considered to be pollution by the s.c.
Just got my blood levels checked. My co2 level is above normal. I kid you not. I think I have a fever
Terry Oldberg says:
November 14, 2013 at 3:51 pm
…
re: ‘equivocations’….
One of the worst ones is the term “climate change”. Climate change per se, is a change of climate. To the AGW crowd, ‘climate change’ is automatically man-made, so that they can instantly fabricate the ad hominem ‘climate change DENIER”, when in fact nobody is “denying” anything. To the warmist, however, a denier is ‘denying’ that change is human caused, while making it sound as though sceptics promote an unchanging world….when, in fact, it the AGW crowd that holds that premise dear. Constancy is paramount, for change is alarming. That this escapes most people is astounding. Not only is the ‘denier’ term ridiculous in its ongoing application, it accuses the sceptic of being ‘guilty’ of the warmist’s prime motivation, to seek a constant world based on some arbitrary climate baseline. Go figure.
….furthermore, the oft-uttered saw “climate change is REAL, and it’s happening NOW”…is held forth as some kind of astounding revelation that elevates the AGW-promoter to some new level of observational skill…when in fact, they say nothing of significance at all…
I’m skipping to the end and someone else may have posted in this topic, but….. The author of this has not seen the columns that appear in our local paper, and possibly elsewhere as well. This past Tuesday we saw: [carbon-based fuels] that are driving climate change
They will be critical players if global emissions are to be reduced enough to stave off runaway climate change.
No, some warmists are flat-out making statements. No conditionals.
Ian M
What makes the warmist-skeptic fight go on and on?
after all these years, WhyTF does WUWT showcase this nieve speculation as if we’re only just now ready to ask it?
Anyone with his eyes open asked and answered this question years ago. : The world elite rich have been pumping $bn/yr into the AGW religion for 30 years. The skeptics are the rational response to the religion.
No need for long rambling essay.
Shame that #1 science blog WUWT has so many posts that are rehashes.
An interesting post, thanks for brining it to my attention Anthony, and thanks Dug Proctor for taking the effort to take the thought-time to produce this.
I am not sure I understand you #2 reason, although I have also asked myself these questions. What we must ultimately be against are the ideologues. They do not waffle – theylie deliberately and out-rightly.
Good thoughtful post.
Language is politically charged. I raise this because I have a friend on Leyte and the phone is dead and I pray my friend is not. I raise this because the Philippine government failed almost as completely as a government could to protect its citizens from a natural disaster – warnings given too late, no construction of typhoon shelters in a region that is hit by twenty typhoons on average a year, the failure to mobilise adequately after the disaster and desperately traumatised people are starving. I raise this because in my community a pitifully small group of Filipinos and some Australians are trying to raise as much money or anything of value to help. And we keep ringing the dead phones. And then this –
http://www.watoday.com.au/comment/typhoon-haiyan-this-is-a-climate-crime-20131115-2xkif.htmlhttp://www.watoday.com.au/comment/typhoon-haiyan-this-is-a-climate-crime-20131115-2xkif.html
The corrupt and incompetent Filipino elite that has contributed so much through its neglect and venality to the deaths that were unnecessary and largely preventable engage in an immoral technique of blame shifting. The richly funded climate warming NGO’s are mobilised to provide diversion from the real criminals. A climate crime enters the discourse from the elite that on this very day are neglecting their people, who lie dead in the streets of a provincial capital. The rottenness of the warmist political strategy is now exposed. Functionaries of warmist NGO’s are paraded before the world’s media parroting the mantra of ” climate crime” . And there is no sense of shame. I raise this finally because the dead deserve better than to become a statistic in a tawdry propaganda exercise by those who basically care less about their suffering than their use value in a political campaign. I almost forgot. None of the prominent climate alarmists in our community have joined our pitiful efforts to help. They must be busy elsewhere.
James Sexton says:
November 14, 2013 at 3:38 pm
Very well said. As for “consensus,” we must always ask what specific hypotheses are included in the consensus. For example, what is the consensus on the “forcings and feedbacks calculation,” which has never been successfully resolved.
The CAWG activists/fanatics have created their own reality. Observations and analysis (in peer reviewed papers) that disproves CAWG is ignored or blocked from publication. Science and logic is on the side of the so called skeptics. CAWG has been disproved.
The CAWG activists, just as some politicians believe lies, suppression of data, ignoring of facts and analysis that disproves the cause, and name calling of critics is OK if it is supports the ‘cause’.
In addition to the CAWG activists, there are a host of profiteers and politicians that are using CAWG for their own agenda. The profiteers do not care about the environment or about the CAGW cause.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/20/if-things-continue-as-they-have-been-in-five-years-at-the-latest-we-will-need-to-acknowledge-that-something-is-fundamentally-wrong-with-our-climate-models/
Hans Van Storch: “There are two conceivable explanations — and neither is very pleasant for us. The first possibility is that less global warming is occurring than expected because greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have less of an effect than we have assumed. This wouldn’t mean that there is no man-made greenhouse effect, but simply that our effect on climate events is not as great as we have believed. The other possibility is that, in our simulations, we have underestimated how much the climate fluctuates owing to natural causes.”
The conversion of food to biofuel is causing a catastrophic loss of habitat. If that madness is not stopped there will either be food wars or starvation of undeveloped countries.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725975,00.html
The Clean Energy Scam – The U.S. quintupled its production of ethanol–ethyl alcohol, a fuel distilled from plant matter–in the past decade, and Washington has just mandated another fivefold increase in renewable fuels over the next decade. Europe has similarly aggressive biofuel mandates and subsidies, and Brazil’s filling stations no longer even offer plain gasoline. Worldwide investment in biofuels rose from $5 billion in 1995 to $38 billion in 2005 and is expected to top $100 billion by 2010, thanks to investors like Richard Branson and George Soros, GE and BP, Ford and Shell, Cargill and the Carlyle Group.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-04-14/biofuel-production-a-crime-against-humanity/2403402
Biofuels ‘crime against humanity’ – Massive production of biofuels is “a crime against humanity” because of its impact on global food prices, a UN official has told German radio. “Producing biofuels today is a crime against humanity,” UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food Jean Ziegler told Bayerischer Runfunk radio. Many observers have warned that using arable land to produce crops for biofuels has reduced surfaces available to grow food. Mr Ziegler called on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to change its policies on agricultural subsidies and to stop supporting only programs aimed at debt reduction. He says agriculture should also be subsidised in regions where it ensures the survival of local populations. Meanwhile, in response to a call by the IMF and World Bank over the weekend to a food crisis that is stoking violence and political instability, German Foreign Minister Peer Steinbrueck gave his tacit backing.
In the main scientists of whatever hue don’t say “shall” or “will” or “is” but choose less definitive words as they know that science is rarely settled. So “probably” or “it seems likely” or “the results suggest” are much more appropriate. You didn’t comment however on the mantra “the science is settled” of which AGW proponents are so fond and is of course as categorical as the “wills” and “shalls” etc used by those who are less convinced of AGW. In fact this mantra probably has had more of an adverse than a positive effect on scientists who are unsure of the ause of global warming
So what are we going to do about it?
“From what I see, there are four different types of (Un)Certainty involved in the CAGW narrative: 1) Computational, 2) Emotional and 3) Representational and 4) Ideological. ”
Nah.
He leaves out the most important one: 0.) Evidential – which is separate fro computational. In climate, computational stems always from the science philosophy of the person(s) creating the formulae/equations. Their assumptions (ideology) determine what importance they assign to each and every term in every line of code. E.g., the climate sensitivity – because they assign high importance to what CO2 does in the atmosphere, the warmists assign a high value to climate sensitivity.
Thus computational is separate from evidence (raw tree ring data, raw measured instrument temps, raw ice core data, calibrated C14 dates, UAH satellite raw data, ARGO raw data, etc.), all of which are evidence BEFORE the ideology translated into computation.
I thought this would be 5 minutes I would never get back until I got to Calvin and Hobbes. Thank Gawd for Calvin and Hobbes!
A.D. Everard says:
November 14, 2013 at 6:09 pm
—————————————–
In your previous comment you wrote -“The fight must continue. This is not something we can meet in the middle ground about.”
This is a very important point. For most sceptics this has been a long hard war. I met Anthony Watts when he toured overseas some years back. I indicated that I believed sceptics would win. He was not so sure, and many sceptics today still see the problem as insurmountable. Everyone wants the war to end, but there is a danger in this. The fellow travellers are desperate to engineer a soft landing and some tired sceptics may be willing to allow it. But if we do, we are just putting a band-aid over a gangrenous wound in our democracy.
Sceptics have a social obligation not just to assault but assault through. The fight no longer needs to be carried by sceptics alone. The general public, angry at being deceived, will soon join the fray. We must arm them our greatest weapon, with the permanent Internet record of the of the actions of the AGW fellow travellers.
The collapse of AGW offers not just the opportunity to destroy the current crop of parasites, it can also be a teachable moment that vaccinates our democracy against future infection.
Sceptics control the true record of the AGW inanity, not the complicit lame stream media. “Unchristian” as it may sound we have an obligation to ensure the social and political destruction of every AGW fellow traveller. If we do not, future generations will suffer continued attacks on science and democracy.
“The warmists use conditionals, i.e. words like “could” or “should” or “may” or “might””
As IBM taught in the 60’s, FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) is the most powerful sales tool. Powerful tools are essential to sell nonsense.
Mike Bromley the Kurd:
Thanks for sharing your example of the equivocation fallacy in action. Unfortunately, applications of this fallacy often succeed in deceiving people. In global warming climatology, a result from this phenomenon is what Dr. Vincent Gray calls “The Triumph of Doublespeak” in a paper of the same name ( http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=483&Itemid=32 ). “Doublespeak” is a synonym for “equivocation.” To prevail in the debate over governemental policy on CO2 emissions, proponents of reason must successfully combat doublespeak aka equivocation. This end can be pursued through insistence upon disambiguation of terms in the language in which this debate is conducted.
Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.
~Leo Tolstoy
Robin nailed it:
This is not to say that those at the top actually believe in Marxism. What they believe in is power and enslaving their fellow man. Marxism is just a useful tool like CAGW,
Zeke says: @ November 14, 2013 at 5:24 pm
The only reason the “warmist/skeptic fight goes on and on” is because we have a free internet…
The conversation will continue as long as there is freedom of speech, of expression, and the right to peaceably assemble.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Unfortunately in the USA Congress just killed the “right to peaceably assemble” link and they are working hard to kill the freedom of speech (try using the N-word) and freedom of expression. If you are passionate about anything besides sports you may find yourself on the DHS Terrorist Watch List.
The Department of Defense is now labeling patriots and our Founding Fathers as extremists, I kid you not.
FOIA document obtained from the Department of Defense entitled: AFSS 0910 EQUAL OPPORTUNITY AND TREATMENT INCIDENTS (EOTI) LESSON PLAN
The ‘Right’ is not the only group labeled extremist.
I guess the only Americans not listed as ‘Extremists’ by the government are the brain-dead couch potatoes.
john robertson says: @ November 14, 2013 at 5:45 pm
… The arguing goes on because an orchestrated litany of lies, has been propagated by a group of secular anti humanists, for purposes other than those they pretend to espouse.
I resent being imposed upon by weak mined do-gooders.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It is not the “weak mined do-gooders” that bother me, it is the power hungry, money grubbing sociopaths and their endless ranks of bureaucrats that scare me to death.
Toto says: @ November 14, 2013 at 6:29 pm
…Replace ‘pro-nature’ by ‘anti-human’. There is a subtle difference. The anti-human part is real, but the pro-nature part is only a romantic ideal for most.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The pro-nature propaganda is tossed in to rope in the useful idiots. Unfortunately they are legion.
Doug, I’d be interested in your take on noble cause corruption related to each. I often wonder if this is the impenetrable membrane through which knowledge osmosis does not seem to occur.
For example. In 1987 I met one of the best chemists I have ever known. We were working on cleaning up a huge liquid hydrocarbon pool floating on the aquifer beneath a large oil refinery. Her work on QA/QC was exemplary. She could see anomalies in the most esoteric of laboratory reports that won her an award from the EPA. Good luck sliding something past her! That was before she went off for her PhD (in some aspect of atmospherics) and til I got back from a sojourn cleaning up toxic sites in Australia in the early ’90’s.
Today, when we discuss the AGW subjects, I get authority (she does not understand this when I try to explain it to her) such as so-and-so says this or that. I reply with emails ripe with annotated figures, quotations from papers, attaching the papers themselves. Documenting that whatever is prognosticated to happen from AGW pales in significance to what has actually already occurred (in the paleo record) that it begs credibility to even think you could detect it at an end extreme interglacial.
Detection limits of a great variety were a huge part of how she would slay shoddy laboratory analytical data and the shoddy interpretations others had drawn from it. I was quite impressed. Which is why I was shocked when it didn’t get through that the IPCC’s AR4 worst case scenario for sea level rise by 2099 was +0.59M amsl, which is less than 10% of the least case estimate of sea level rise at the second thermal pulse at the end of the last extreme interglacial, which is +6.0M amsl, and just over 1% of the worst case estimate of +52M amsl.
The shock would be if the anthropogenic signal could somehow be detected at all if the envelope of natural climate noise was 10 to 100 times (1 to 2 orders of magnitude) greater than the very best “anthropogenic signal” from the worst case AR4 upper error bar scenario. It was a complete reversal of her former logic as a forensic environmental chemist. “Now” a “signal” can apparently be presumed to be something as dreadful as 1%-10% of the background noise, in order to be considered not just important but critical! Again, I was impressed, but not positively this time.
When I consider noble cause corruption I am often struck by two rather empirical thoughts. It took us about a million years (from roughly 2.8 to 1.8 or so million years ago) to go from cutting just one sharp-edge per rock (single-variable processing) to two (first multi-tasking anyone??), setting off the Acheulian tool period. It took us almost twice that long to go from two sharp edges to cooking metals out of rocks (from about 1.8 MA to mid-Holocene), setting off the various metal ages (iron, bronze etc.). Which was what, some 5,000 years ago or so? Given whatever human speciation/generations that represents, how many have actually moved beyond one or two variables? Or, how many variables can each of us now juggle at one time? Doesn’t noble cause corruption limit the number of variables one can juggle? How many realize the number of operations, variables checked etc. are involved in posting a simple or complex comment here? If there is only a single variable to process (CO2), what in the world happened at the end-Eemian, end-Holsteinian (MIS-11 and D-O events)?
The second thought regards when do we plunk down, and how can that be corrupted? How is it possible for a hominid supremely well-versed in deeply scientific analytical logic (plunked down) to not only be reprogrammed to espouse the opposing argument (re-plunked down), but also be impervious to the most simplistic of analytical logic such as signal to noise ratio (SNR)?
For me the answer came in the mid 1970s as what I came to call “The Nine-Times Rule”, that the human being is nine times more susceptible to rumor than it is to fact. From a paper we debated at some length in a graduate course in psychology. Recent confirmation is to be had here:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1102.3931.pdf
If 90% of us can be permanently switched by just 10% salespeople then, supposedly, you should be able to keep your climate if you like it. Period. If you like your climate (witch-)doctor you can keep him/her. Period. Only cavemen remember the ice ages and witches that caused them. It is merely a question of mental osmosis across a permeable, or less, cortex. If CO2 is not the heat-trapping “thermostat” it is prognosticated to be, then what do you have in mind for the next, and likely imminent, glacial inception? If CO2 is the heat-trapping “thermostat” it is made out to be, would you recommend removing it from the late Holocene atmosphere so as to not impede onset of the next glacial? In any case, how long will the Holocene last? (Please, no one quote Loutre and Berger 2002/2003 again, that was put to rest by http://large.stanford.edu/publications/coal/references/docs/Lisiecki_Raymo_2005_Pal.pdf last decade.)
Without CO2 will MIS-1 turn out to be like MIS-11? If not, could we force it with CO2? Could we force it with anything else? Or would you prefer the next glacial regardless?
That can be boiled down to just one question/variable for the “let me be perfectly clear” amongst us:
Would you like fries with your future climate?
Or would you “rather fight than switch” (Tarleton’s cigarettes) the next inevitable glacial inception in some other, perhaps more savvy way?
And on and on……..
FIGHTING out of the red corner in The UFC (Ultimate Fungible Climate) Heavyweight Division is:
The Late Eemian Aridity Pulse (LEAP) (the interglacial which preceded the Holocene interglacial) Sirocko, et al, 2005 (“A late Eemian aridity pulse in central Europe during the last glacial inception”, nature, vol. 436, 11 August 2005, http://www.particle-analysis.info/LEAP_Nature__Sirocko+Seelos.pdfdoi:10.1038/nature03905, pp 833-836.):
“Investigating the processes that led to the end of the last interglacial period is relevant for understanding how our ongoing interglacial will end, which has been a matter of much debate…..”
“The onset of the LEAP occurred within less than two decades, demonstrating the existence of a sharp threshold, which must be near 416 Wm2, which is the 65oN July insolation for 118 kyr BP (ref. 9). This value is only slightly below today’s value of 428 Wm2. Insolation will remain at this level slightly above the inception for the next 4,000 years before it then increases again.”
FIGHTING out of the blue corner is the mannly, season 2009 pre-Climategate champion, a mixed mutational arts (MMA) geo-jitsu practitioner hailing from Penn State (well, maybe we better not go into all of that….), with a professional record of but just a few disclosures, massive lower-thinking knockouts, and no draws (well, there was no data sooooo….).
After 17 years we go to the judges for a decision………
Judge El Nino de Pacifico scores it 1998 no contest.
Judges AMDO and PDO score it 34/30 years positive modes et al since 1979.
Judge SOL was conflicted-out due to possibly pernicious, but not too spotty, peak non-engagements.
So by split-decision that’s the way it is near the end of year 11,716 since the end of the Younger-Dryas cold interval.
Go Genus Homo! MIS-1. Somehow. Forever! ……….and on and on and on
Let whatever climate FIGHT there is LEFT begin……..
meemoe_uk says: @ November 14, 2013 at 7:17 pm
…Shame that #1 science blog WUWT has so many posts that are rehashes.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
There are many who are new to this blog so “rehashes’ are not unwelcome. There is also new data available on old topics or new insights from these new people.
DO not forget there are many many people who read WUWT who never comment and getting information out to them is a priority.
William Astley says: …. Biofuel….
There is more damage being done than most people realize.
The vast majority of biofuels in the US are generated from corn.
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12039&page=10
Huge amounts of western water is used to irrigate corn for biofuels.
http://www.coloradocorn.com/resources/ethanol-biofuels
Corn is a heavy feeder and requires fertile, well-drained soil. In other words it is a major drain on the soil.
And then there is erosion.
WUWT is on a roll. These two posts above and Willis’ excellent post about fishing in the Salomon Islands a day or so ago. I have long stopped wondering why I come here everyday.
Watch as it gets closer to January budget battle, Gail, we’re sure to see much more of the extremist show. They’re ‘smelling blood’ this time and with the approaching mid-terms this could even be even worse than last. They have the memory of a fruit gnat and run around all impatient, like they only have a short time on this planet to get their mission accomplished… and then run go get dressed up for the Fox News book promotion scam. 🙂
Steve Reddish says:
November 14, 2013 at 5:27 pm
Slightly off topic to this thread, though on topic to several posts to this thread and others:
It would have been better wording for me to have said “several posts to this blog”, as I did not mean I was referring to several posts to this thread alone.
DirkH says:
November 14, 2013 at 6:36 pm
Dirk, By “such claims” I meant “The claim that there is no rational, scientific basis for a belief in God…”
I brought my comment to this thread because it has posts on the subject of people holding a position on CAGW based upon emotion, not reason. As I have seen posts making “such claims” (of no rational, scientific basis for God) occasionally on this blog I thought this would be an appropriate time to note that “such claims” were actually based on emotion not reason, as there clearly are rational and scientific reasons for believing in God.
I also wanted to note that “such claims” were off topic for this blog, not just this thread.
Jquip says:
November 14, 2013 at 5:44 pm
Jquip, you have presented a philosophical, and therefore rational, argument as to why God cannot be proven scientifically. While I was not claiming that God could be proven scientifically, In making your argument, you accept the possibility of a rational argument for God. I was referring only to those who claim that there is no rational basis for believing in God.
Lest you think when I say that I did not claim that God can be proven scientifically, that I am backpedaling from my statements that belief in God is consistent with science, consider that Plato (One of the first to philosophise on teleology) cannot be scientifically proven to have existed either, yet it is not anti-science to believe he did exist.
But I do not wish to tie up this thread any further with this off topic subject. If you wish to continue, reach me via my yahoo email at stevereddish
It seems to me that the whole of this argument is predicated on two camps: “warmists” and “sceptics”. IMHO the most important aspect is the huge number of people who could not care less either way.
In our French conversation lesson the other morning, we were discussing an article on the “transition écologique”, i.e. stopping the use of carbon-based fuels. Our neighbour who takes the lesson was clearly fully on board with the “fact” that carbon causes global warming and its use as a fuel must be stopped to save the planet. She was quite surprised when I said that I did not believe that was the case. Although there are other environmental issues which I think are important, carbon dioxide was not one of them.
As an intelligent woman not particularly interested in climate, she has been immersed in the (mis-) information provided by media of all types and accepts the “message”. The “passive co-conspiracy” mentioned earlier in the comments is the biggest threat to this nonsense not going away. It’s all to do with the vast numbers of people who are not that interested. Fortunately, the wide-ranging consequences of the inexorable rise in the cost of energy will eventually force the “not-interested” to become interested. So perhaps loony energy legislation, rather than static temperatures, will be the trigger and provide the unintended consequence of ending this swindle.
Those who read and comment on this blog probably feel comfortable in the company of like-minded souls (spiced up with the occasional contrary opinion). We are a tiny minority. The vast numbers out there simply do not care. The only way that they will care is when a link between the stupidity of the policies and their standard of living is clearly established.
In response to:
“Ideological Certainty is what drives the eco-green. Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Maurice Strong, David Suzuki, Friends of the Earth, the Waterkeepers, opponents of the XL Keystone pipeline: the arguments for CAGW are mere backups for other, anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist, pro-nature beliefs. This is not to say that those other beliefs are not valid, only that the principle position is not CO2-based warming per se. With Ideological Certainty, the certainty is that continuing the path we are on, the status quo, will cause socio- and environmental damage that is unacceptable (and may be catastrophic).”
The course of action that Greenpeace, the green parties, and CAGW activists are advocating – limiting CO2 emissions and massive investments in green scams – will not work (will not stop climate change as the climate change was caused by solar magnetic cycle changes and the majority of the CO2 increase was caused by CO2 released from the deep ocean when the planet warmed not due to anthropogenic CO2 emissions and regardless the planet resists rather than amplifies forcing change so there is no CAGW problem to solve) and will (has damaged) damage, not protected the environment.
For example green peace and the green parties are ideologically fanatically anti-nuclear. They inherited that ideology. To be ‘green’ is to hate nuclear power, to hate companies, to hate development, and so on. Anti defines the cause, the ideology. The anti is a given, accepted without thought when one joins the movement. The followers accept the ‘ideology’ as a given, they do not form or change the ideology. The ideology is pasted on unchanged, from generation to generation. It is independent of facts and logic. The ‘green’ movement has failed.
William: I would highly recommend a read through this analysis.
The Death of Environmentalism – Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World, By Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus http://www.thebreakthrough.org/images/Death_of_Environmentalism.pdf
A number of prominent environmentalists (see film Pandora’s promise) and CAGW advocates (for example James Hansen) are now advocating the support of fourth generation nuclear power which uses 99.5% of the fission energy of uranium rather than 3% of the energy of uranium. Facts and analysis have changed their minds. The US developed a prototype working fourth generation reactor in 1986. It is a failsafe design: It shutdown when running at full power on complete loss of power (tested at full power)/on complete loss of coolant (tested at full power), the fourth generation reactor reduces nuclear waste by a factor of a 100, leaves only short life nuclear waste, is a factor of 30 times more efficient, and so on.
An efficient compact effective source of energy is a tool that is useful, regardless of the political party in power.
Ian L. McQueen says: I’m skipping to the end and someone else may have posted in this topic, but….. No, some warmists are flat-out making statements. No conditionals.
This article is not helpful. I was actually explaining to a pro-IPCC person yesterday that their language was not appropriate to a scientist and now we have a whole article criticising the appropriate scientific use of caution.
Indeed, I’ve spent two days having pro-IPCC people saying “it is” “it does” “it will” when it was nothing of the sort.
Saying thing “are true” is what politicians do … because they gamble they can get away with it.
saying things “maybe true … if this and if that” is what a proper scientist says. This because a proper scientist is always open to the possibility that new evidence will come along which will require them to change their interpretation. So science is never settled.
And a very good example of this came up in the recent Salby lecture in Edinburgh.
Take e.g. the IPCC statements:
“All these increases [in CO2 from pre-industrial times] are caused by human activity”
and
“The increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration is known to be caused by human activities because the character of CO2 in the atmosphere, in particular the ratio of its heavy to light carbon atoms, has changed in a way that can be attributed to addition of fossil fuel carbon.” (IPCC AR4)
There are no conditions in these
But as Salby demonstrates (finding 9) and in his words “this is impossible”.
Contrast this to how Salby (or perhaps it was me) phrases his finding on Carbon 13:
“Carbon 13 is not a fingerprint of human emissions. Instead its production (at least in part) relates to surface conditions.” (finding 7)
This is the hallmark of a real scientist. The key here, is that Salby unlike the pro-IPCC people is careful not to say “the production of carbon 13 (the supposed fingerprint of humanity on atmospheric CO2) is due to surface conditions”. Instead he says “is due … at least in part”. And he says this, although none of the evidence (at least in his presentation) shows otherwise. Even though he does not have anything to show the human fingerprint, he properly allows for the possibility it may be found after further investigation.
Caution is the mark of a true sceptic
OK the science is uncertain
but the proponents are not they are 100% certain
– hence their emphatic green drama queening
– Catastrophe will come
– CO2 only has negative effects
– The heat has been proven to be hiding in the oceans and the temps have been proven to be rising
– This week’s weather event was caused by global warming
– and in their minds not only is everything certain, also everything is “more that ever” e.g. temperatures/ocean acidification/Arctic de-icing etc. are all changing faster than ever (in their minds)
– Note that it is a common rhetorical tricks among reporters and Greenpeace PR people to couch climate stories in conditional terms so that a LIE of certainty is created in the mind off the reader.
e.g. Harrabin’s “I could not find a single scientist in the Climate field”, beomes “there are no scientists experienced in the Climate field who are sceptical of large parts of IPCC science.”
Gail Combs: “The only reason the “warmist/skeptic fight goes on and on” is because we have a free internet…”
I think what we are seeing in climate may be typical of a wider “trade union” culture in academia. There is very much a closed shop mentality of 1970s trade unionists, that some work “belongs” to people and that no one else is allowed to do it. So “climate science” is seen as something that only academics are allowed to have views on. You can’t work on “our” subject unless you are one of “us”. We also find the attitude of like a trade union closed shop that: “anyone who questions the credibility of one of us, questions the credibility of us all … and therefore we will all attack back”.
In the past, this academic closed shop was not a problem – it may even have been helpful. It was possible because the discourse was held in academic journals and/or one needed expensive scientific equipment to obtain the necessary data on which to work. If there were outsiders, they were underfunded and easily dismissed.
Climate is different. Because there is very little real data, that which there has been has worked its way into the public domain and the internet has then made it readily accessible. Also, the environmentalists used the internet to make it popular (example Wikipedia). So, unlike many academic subjects this took off in the internet … at first the internet was the tool used to overwhelmingly dominate the argument to support the scare.
But paradoxically it is now the internet that has made it perfectly feasible for anyone with a PC to do climate research and then to get their research published on-line (like here) … without ever having to submit it to the academic closed shop. WUWT is still peer reviewed … but unlike in the past, the academic closed shop cannot dictate what can and cannot be published.
This is a fundamental shift in power in this subject away from academia.
So, yes the internet is responsible, but only because it has allowed us sceptics to bypass the academic closed shop. As one might expect, this has not been exactly welcomed by academia. This probably explains the way so many apparently sensible academics have had a knee jerk reaction against the reasonable arguments of sceptics. The “consensus” is not about science but about who whether the closed shop of academia has the right to do climate research and be the credible source of information.
But, the internet is here to stay. Academia cannot change the internet, so it is academia that has to change not us. They will get over it when they realise that the world outside academia has changed for the better.
on another thread
DrJohnGalan says:
November 15, 2013 at 12:53 am
… IMHO the most important aspect is the huge number of people who could not care less either way.
….So perhaps loony energy legislation, rather than static temperatures, will be the trigger and provide the unintended consequence of ending this swindle.
……The only way that they will care is when a link between the stupidity of the policies and their standard of living is clearly established.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I think you are correct. No one cared about the fractional reserve fraud that has been slowly moving the wealth of the poor and middle class into the hands of the elite for the last hundred years until the Forclosuregate and the huge bank bailouts. Then all of a sudden we got the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street and everyone was interested in how the banking system actually worked. Of course it hasn’t really mattered and the same parasites are still in charge in D.C. because we have no viable third party as the post on Ken Cuccinelli loss showed.
Alarmists use disputes among the skeptics – a natural “healthy” exchange of views – normal operation mode of science …
“… consensus …”, “… the leading scientists …”
– It’s the most important “final” (when lacking scientific) arguments alarmists
… let’s cite of my favorite paper:
„Generally speaking, we can observe that the scientists in any particular institutional and political setting move as a flock …”
—Gunnar Myrdal, Objectivity in Social Research
“The academy is, after all, a club, and members are expected to be discreet. Like any exclusive club, the academic world fears public scrutiny. ”
—Richard Wisniewski, “The Averted Gaze”
“The thousand profound scholars may have failed, first, because they were scholars, secondly, because they were profound, and thirdly, because they were a thousand.”
—Edgar Allan Poe, “The Rationale of Verse”
„Stanley Rothman, Robert Lichter, and Neil Nevitte (2005) provide evidence that conservative scholars hold less academically prestigious positions than their peers…”
That’s why alarmists, unfortunately, have the power – control … And they want “build” us another new – old version of authoritarianism. As usual, they say: “In the name of humanity happiness” “save the planet” – not MAN but “planet”, “humanity” …
“Above all, hatred of the human animal must stop.” – full agreement, it is the most important.
Toto posted above:
““the arguments for CAGW are mere backups for other, anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist, pro-nature beliefs”
Replace ‘pro-nature’ by ‘anti-human’. There is a subtle difference. The anti-human part is real, but the pro-nature part is only a romantic ideal for most.”
I was going to make exactly the same point. Thanks for beating me to it.
Human activity cannot be separated from nature. We exist within nature and as part of it, and are incapable of acting ‘unnaturally’.
I think it’s a lot simpler: a lot of people found a way to make money from the CAGW confrontation, on both sides of the fence.
For reasons of ego, laziness, economic necessity or simple lack of alternatives enough of them refuse to back off, so the fight goes on.
What makes the fight go on? Well it has nothing to do with science but everything to do with self-preservation.
Too many people and too many organisations have nailed themselves to their “incontrovertible settled gold standard climate science” cross.
If they were to now even suggest that maybe they were wrong about their CO2/greenhouse effect supposition on man-made global warming, the implications and consequences for them would be catastrophic. Reputations, careers, and their credibility would end up in ruins. The legal implications for them, alone, would be devastating.
That is why they really have no other option but to continue with the deceit and fraud.
The whole bloody lot of them should face criminal charges for knowingly engaging in misleading and deceptive conduct, and for bringing the field of climate science into disrepute.
When someone says “smoking causes cancer”, this is both a true and false statement, depending on how you view the question. Not everyone that smokes develops cancer, which makes the statement is false. People that smoke have an increased risk of cancer, which makes the statement true. Thus one can argue both sides of the question and be correct.
What applies to “smoking” applies equally to AGW. The question is both true and false at the same time, because the future itself is not deterministic. Both A and B are true and false in the future, and only when you arrive at the future can you establish that A is true and B is false.
This flies in the face of common sense, that tells us the universe is a 19th century clockwork mechanism, but it is the only conclusion that permits free will and self-determination. If the universe was truly a clockwork mechanism, then the future is truly written and all our decisions and actions were determined at the birth of the first ancestral universe, or before.
the notion that science can be used as an authority to answer “true” or “false” questions is an abuse of science. science is a methodology by which we discover “false”. however, science cannot discover “true” because of the unknown. what we believe true today may be shown to be false tomorrow, repeated on to infinity. the modern practice of casting science in the role of authority has led to a rash of false beliefs, no different than casting the church in the same role centuries before.
Scottish Sceptic: “Carbon 13 is not a fingerprint of human emissions. Instead its production (at least in part) relates to surface conditions.”(finding 7)
“is not” doesn’t sound very conditional to me. So you pointed out one conditional statement (“relates”), and assumed that the entire argument is conditional? You are not being objective.
ferd berple says at November 15, 2013 at 7:24 am…
While I get what you mean – that science is a tool to determine falsehood – I think you go too far when you say
It is quite reasonable to make practical decisions on incomplete evidence.
If you’ve never been to Australia you may choose to think all those who claim to have been there are delusional and that the pictures are fake as you have no direct evidence for Australia yourself. Such a judgement (extreme scepticism) is justifiable as you can’t prove truth.
Probably.
But is that the best strategy? Alternatively you could make a “leap of faith” and say that it seems reasonable to act as though Australia is real.
Likewise, practical belief in AGW is not inherently irrational.
Empirically irrational, maybe, but not necessarily beyond the wit of a reasonable man.
It seems to me that the general tone of this thread is that the argument continues because “they are wrong and we are right” or “they use belief and we use logic”. This kind of thinking is certainly contributing to the lack of civil discussion. I believe another reason is that extreme positions are wrongly deemed representative of both sides (skeptics reject the greenhouse effect, alarmists think every storm is proof of AGW). Attacking these extreme minority points does nothing for the core debate.
I think the reality of the situation is that the debate cannot end for another 50 years at least. Climate is something that varies on decadal and longer timescales. It will be very difficult to conclusively prove or disprove the impacts of any forcings in less than a century of data.
Gene Selkov says:
November 14, 2013 at 2:47 pm
“We are not using the same mental vocabulary talking about lots of things. Many words that once had common and widely accepted meaning have now been redefined within certain political and social groups.”
Amen, brother! Take the sociologists’ and psychologists’ relatively new meaning of the word ‘mistake’. It used to mean having done A when you had intended to do B, or in arithmetic getting the wrong answer. Now it has a woofty poofty meaning commonly used when someone is a drug addict, bank robber, and the like: they made a ‘mistake’ when, in fact they did exactly what they had intended to do. It’s hard to mistakenly rob a bank, unless you had intended to rob a trust company and got the bank by accident. Similarly it’s hard to mistakenly shoot up heroin, unless your incompetent doctor had intended to vaccinate you for small pox or your diabetes shot was switched.This word change was made by politically correct, neosocialist socio/psychs who wanted to take away responsibility for the actions such folks. Indeed, it should be blamed on the responsible, functioning, well-behaved majority!
@Gary Young Pearse: the word “misstep” is also common in the context of bank robbers’ careers and such. I don’t know if it is a full synonym of “mistake” or has its specific connotations, but I often hear stories about people who had been firmly on the right path, and then misstepped.
They can say all they want, the bottom line is what the temperatures will be doing going forward, and that is going to be down.
AGW theory is BS, and it will be proven wrong before this decade is out.
Although solar flux is high currently , it is not being reflected in the AP index which is very low or UV light measurements in the 0-105nm range still running quite low.
I believe the prolonged solar minimum is intact despite the blip in sunspots and solar flux readings of late, and this type of solar condition if it persist is going to result in a temperature decline going forward.
The internet is not keeping the debate going. It is simply a tool that we use to communicate. Without it, we would communicate more slowly, but we would still communicate.
I began studying AGW after Hansen’s infamous presentation to Congress in 1988. As a meteorologist, I had access to much of the literature in the journals, but there was precious little on the internet.. After about two years, I was highly skeptical and believed I was the only one. In the early 1990s, I attended a conference where I discovered that I was not alone. There were many skeptical of an AGW crisis and we had all arrived at our conclusions independently. We were not crazy.
The skeptical movement existed before the internet and will continue to exist if the internet goes away. While it facilitates the exchange of information and ideas, it does so indiscriminately for both sides, therefore…the outcome of the debate may very well be the same as if the internet did not exist at all. We will just arrive at that outcome sooner.
Jim Clarke says:
November 14, 2013 at 8:02 pm
So what are we going to do about it?
I’ve thought a lot about that, and can offer no remedies.
When my children were younger there were often occasions when together we observed a stupid, idiotic action by another individual. I would respond, “Look at what that person is doing, do you see the ignorance in that action(s)?” They would ask, “Why are they doing that?” Often I would just respond that I didn’t know. In order to appropriately answer their question (and yours, albiet inappropriately) I’m inclined to relate one of the most intelligent, intuitive, responses given to me by my 12 old following one of my “I don’t know” responses:
She matter of factly surmised, ” I guess it’s because you can’t think stupid.”
Scottish Sceptic: ‘There are no conditions in these.’
The phrase ‘that can be attributed’ sounds conditional to me, whereas ‘There are no conditions in these’ does not sound at all conditional.
Here are a couple of other statements without conditions:
• ‘So science is never settled’
• ‘Caution is the mark of a true sceptic’
The latter statement also contains the ‘no true Scotsman’ fallacy.
Scottish Sceptic, perhaps it’s time to re-think your moniker.
M Courtney said @ November 15, 2013 at 7:54 am
In response to ferd berple at November 15, 2013 at 7:24 am…
Phew! I thought I was about to disappear then I read the second paragraph.
Reminds me of an old philosopher’s joke. Descartes walks into his favourite bar an orders a drink. After he has finished it, the barman asks: “Would you like another M. Descartes?” Descartes replies: “I think not” and disappears in a puff of smoke.
The IPCC used to make predictions [will] then changed to proposing story lines and ‘what ifs’ when the realised failure.
The reason why this fight goes on and on is simple. AGW as first told to us in the first IPCC report has failed according to observations between then and now. In any other science this would be game, set and match. But CAGW is kept going by massive funding, media backing, political backing and pointing to individual weather events over days or months. The climate as per IPCC and WMO is 30 years or more of weather data.
Ahhhhhh those were the days. The days when they were confident. Here are a few examples.
berniel says:
November 14, 2013 at 3:41 pm
A bit too much linguistic reductionism for me. reminds me of those who think they can solve Palestine co[n]flict lingu[i]stically. in this case, with AGW, I’m with Hume: ‘reason is a slave to the passion’
berniel,
I agree with your assertion and Hume’s quote is apropos.
I favor Ayn Rand: Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it.
This is a dark age for reasoned thought and analyses. We face persistent adversaries on many, many fronts, as a result.
MtK
In my studies of the last ice ages, it appears that there was a warming period prior to the last ice age/s. This affected the gulf stream as more fresh water was drained into its current, pushing the sea water down. This was noticed by a nuclear submarine when traversing the polar ice and that there was no marine life in the fresh water that overlay the salt water. I can’t remember the depth but it was significant. Gud luck any way stripping away all the evidence and corrupting the data to prove their hypothesis.,
Jim Clarke says:
November 15, 2013 at 9:02 am
“The internet is not keeping the debate going. It is simply a tool that we use to communicate. Without it, we would communicate more slowly, but we would still communicate […] While it facilitates the exchange of information and ideas, it does so indiscriminately for both sides, therefore…the outcome of the debate may very well be the same as if the internet did not exist at all. We will just arrive at that outcome sooner.”
———————————————-
Jim,
I believe you have vastly underestimated the power of the Internet and the critical role it has played in the collapse of the AGW inanity. I do not believe the outcome of the debate would have been the same if not for the Internet.
You are correct that the Internet allowed faster communications, and this was critical in allowing the speed of valid scepticism to exceed the speed of invalid action. But the Internet is much more than just “faster” communication, it provided near instantaneous communication allowing the networking of intelligence and resources, both human and data.
A case in point is the crowd sourced physical surface station survey the host of this fantastic site organised with hundreds of volunteers. This project would have been impractical without the Internet. The project totally blind sided the propagandists and forced the hurried introduction of the very valuable CRN stations. The project also resulted in the publication of the Fall et. all study that showed that the supposed AGW signal in surface station data (faster rise in Tmin than Tmax) was actually the signal of the worst sited and maintained stations.
You state – “While it facilitates the exchange of information and ideas, it does so indiscriminately for both sides”. I would argue that this is not the case. In the festering groupthink of twitter and facebook maybe, but not on the blogs. Here is where the propagandists lost. A comparison of the Internet to historical public debate would show that twitter and facebook are the coffee houses whereas blogs are the more respected salons of the 17 & 1800s. The propagandists tried their traditional astroturfing games on blogs and failed. They were seen to censor and post edit debate, which is social death for a salon. Those telling the truth have proved to have an advantage on the Internet. The internet is proving to be acid-dip to “narrative”. All of Soros dollars and all of Fentons men cannot put AGW back together again.
The old saying “a lie has got halfway around the world before the truth has got it’s boots on” while still true in the Internet age, but no longer relevant. The truth now arrives just moments later wearing hobnail boots with steel toe caps. It took 3 years and $300,000 to cook up the Karoly and Gergis Australian hockey stick tripe. How many hours did it survive on the Internet?
It is also said that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. The Internet now provides that vigilance 24/7 for free. We do not live in the age of Big Brother, but rather the age of Little Brother. Little Brother is legion. Little brother is not just watching, but also recording.
It is in ignoring not just the threat of public freedom and speed of communication, but critically the threat of a citizen controlled and instantly assessable public record that the AGW fellow travellers have made their greatest mistake. The success of their plans and the efficacy of any fall-back exit strategy relied on the complicit lame stream media remaining the gate keepers of opinion and record. The Internet has destroyed all hope of this. In the lame stream media age “given enough rope” may have been the appropriate phrase. In the Internet age “given enough piano wire with spectacular, if messy, results” may be more appropriate.
Konrad said @ November 15, 2013 at 5:08 pm
That must have hurt. Good Thing, too 🙂
What makes the warmist-skeptic fight go on and on? Version II
The absolute refusal of AGW proponents to acknowledge that Anthropogenic CO2 Emissions will cause an unprecedented and dangerous rise in global temperatures is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG,WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG,WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG,WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG,WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG,
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/11/16/nasa-demonstrates-unequivocally-that-global-warming-theory-has-failed/
What is difficult to understand about that?
And when the theory has failed, so will all the “solutions” to “solve” the “problems” based on that “theory”.
The essential problem in “communication” however is that the warmist’s talk religion based ideology and the sceptics talk fact based sanity”.
As I said before, you can’t fight a religion.
What’s more effective, but tiresome at some times, is to fight the fraud behind the religion.
Don’t pay CO2 taxes and if you don’t have any choice perform your payment under protest.
In the middle of all the internet communication of postings, e-mail, sms and social media I have resorted to the pen, paper and a post stamp.
1. I pay my electricity bill minus the climate BS tax which I transfer in a separate payment under protest and send a copy to the Government.
2. Don’t buy anything from a company that has bent over to the Green doctrine and let their management know why you no longer do business with them.
3. I have done this consequently with Apple Computer and even with Al Gore on their board of directors they have clearly retrieved from he “save the planet” front.
Alarmism doesn’t sell consumer products to non warmists.
4. Don’t fuel up your car with ethanol, don’t participate in any subsidized government scheme because we all know other people have to pay the bill, mostly those who can’t afford it. Protest any green initiative within your community and let your politicians, your local media outlets, radio and broadcasting stations and energy providers know why you are fed up with their crap on a regular. A standard letter with a short summery of verifiable facts and graphs send by the thousands creates a second wave of opposition and it shakes people awake in unexpected places.
The most time consuming:
5. Over the past years I have cut out news paper articles which didn’t have a forum response opportunity or blocked my postings. I underlined the BS remarks in the article with and orange marker, numbered them, made a list with web links that contained real hard facts and wrote a short letter warning them if they continued to print BS not improving on their investigative journalism, I would consider legal measures.
The last last line of any letter to the press: I regard the extremely biased and incorrect press reporting as a threat to my future and my personal freedoms as the content of your article supports devastating and above all very costly Government measures that directly affect my personal life but yours too.
That’s why I would like to remind you of the fact that it is the primary role of the free press to protect the democratic and civil rights of the people, your readers.
In short you have a serious personal stake in this.
In our modern times of Internet and social media, not many letters are send any more and I can tell you that it has effect. I have received calls by several media outlets and had the opportunity to have some interesting discussions.
It all comes down to the notion that Climatism is part of the far left Progressive movement, designed to put more and more power over Other People in the hands of the Government. Jonah Goldberg referred to Progressivism as a fascistic political doctrine. Everything Warmists push finds power over people, companies, and the private economy increasing. It finds more money moving from the private sector to the public sector. It finds government owning, or at least heavily running/regulating, the private sector. It is part of turning the USA, and the world, into a secular entity which pays homage to government.
Yet these same Warmists rarely practice what they preach. How many private planes were flown to COP19? How many of these 10K+ people used fossil fueled travel, and then tell us fossil fuels are Evil? If they truly believed in the mule fritters they push, they’d change their own lives. They don’t and won’t.
Yeah, saving the planet requires some concessions and of course fully justifies buck loads of hypocrisy. They are criminals behaving like Robin Hood.
It seems to my eyes that the objective is simply control via Green totalitarianism. This control can arise out of fear. This control can arise out of manipulation of science. And importantly, this control can consolidate wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands. I asked Lester Brown at his Commonwealth Club appearance in San Francisco after he said we have seven years to solve the Carbon Crisis-if this meant Green Totalitarianism/Maoism-given the global emergency. His interesting response did not touch the question and the commentator moved on to another question. He said there were three responses: the 1942 all out top down solution; a bottom up solution; and a kind of muddle through solution. Maurice Strong of course and others have their agenda and I suspect it is essentially totalitarian.