Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
In discussing President Obama’s latest boondoggle, the one billion (with a “b) dollar Climate Resilience Plan, The US Under-Assistant Minister of Scientific Silly Walks, John Holdren, wandered way off of the party line. The party line in question, of course, is …
“Although we can’t ascribe any given weather event to climate change, we still insist that blah blah blah …”
Perhaps Holdren’s teleprompter was broken, but anyhow, here’s what he said (emphasis mine):
During a call with reporters on Thursday evening, the assistant to the president on science and technology, John Holdren, said, without any doubt, the severe drought plaguing California and a number of other states across the country is tied to climate change.
Now, that quote was bad enough, since everyone from the IPCC to my cat agrees that
• There is no link between historical post-Little-Ice-Age warming and extreme weather, and
• Droughts are more common in colder times than in warmer times, and
• For the last decade and a half there’s been no statistically significant warming, certainly not enough to cause increased extreme weather.
• We have neither the understanding nor the information necessary to ascribe ANY single weather event to climate change, and we’re a long ways from having either one.
But despite Holdren going way off piste in his comment, it wasn’t truly of the quality needed for a quote of the week. It wasn’t concise enough for an epigram … or for an epitaph, for that matter.
However, just when it all looked hopeless, Holdren rallied, came back and captured the gold by uttering the deathless words that will ring forever in the halls of climate academe:
Weather practically everywhere is being caused by climate change.
There you have it, folks, Holdren’s Law of Climate Causation, all you need to know about droughts and such … weather practically everywhere is being caused by climate change.
…
… and people wonder why the alarmists are having trouble these days peddling their nostrums? Well, mostly it’s not a communications failure. Mostly, it’s because we’ve been lied to before by these same folks (including Holdren), and Holdren’s current pathetic shilling for the Obamaclimate program is just more of the same.
The issue is not how the science is being communicated, as Judith Curry and many others seem to think.
The issue is that what is being communicated is so obviously not science, but merely poorly framed and scientifically absurd scare tactics, that as in this case, the communication just makes people point and laugh …
Regards to all,
w.
I agree with Nick Stokes. The amount of warming over the past 17 years and 5 months is 0.00 degrees Celsius and I think we all agree that amount is “statistically significant”.
To my American friends,
Best wishes to all of you on Saint Valentine’s Day.
We in North America are all in this together.
Candidly, my good friends, you need to find much better help.
This Holdren chap is just not up to snuff.
Dump him and his boss, ASAP.
This is not a new problem – see below.
Best regards, Allan
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.’
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Propaganda (Holdren’s Law of Climate Causation) does not change reality.
The drought in California was caused by extreme cold temperatures in central Canada and extreme cold temperatures in central US which the cold high blocked the normal lows from the Pacific Ocean that bring rain to California. Winnipeg Canada for example has had the coldest winter in 60 years.
The extreme cold temperatures in central Canada and central US have created a Rossby wave that is the cause for the string of rain storms in the UK. The UK weather is dependent on the direction of wind across the Atlantic.
Coinciding with these changes is the largest increase in Arctic summer, sea ice coverage on record (caused by the increase in cloud cover in the arctic in the summer) and the highest month by month sea ice coverage in the Antarctic in the last 35 years.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
As planetary temperature has not increased in 17 years, something else must have changed to cause what is observed.
What has changed is the sun.
http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest/latest_4096_4500.jpg
Comment: Unfortunately for California the solar cycle 24 change is going to bring biblical floods to California. A super weak solar magnetic cycle results in high GCR which results in increased precipitation and an increase in cloud cover over the ocean.
It doesn’t matter that they are idiots–they are idiots with power and power is all that matters.
@Paul Coppin –
As a reformed academic myself, I can testify as to how far back the academic disease (i.e., institutionalized ignorance and stupidity pretending to be learning and knowledge) goes – I left academia in 1973 having had quite enough, thank you.
About all these people’s credentials do for them is to make them arrogant and think they are morally and socially superior. In my observation, for a huge majority of academics, their education leaves them knowing less that is factual about the world, even about their own specialties, and less able to engage in rational discourse, than ordinary educated laypeople. They are actually inferior, not superior, to the people for which they harbor such contempt.
Holdren’s case is an example of this, but is also compounded by misanthropy, perverse motives in general, and just plain mean-spiritedness (to “de-develop” the United States can only be taken as the mantra of a vandal, a wastrel, a hatemonger). He is a particularly maleficent, evil personage whose ambitions must be frustrated at all costs.
“”Weather practically everywhere is being caused by climate change.””…per the post
———————————————————————————————————–
Wow! That means that somewhere on our planet there is a little sliver of weather that is not caused by climate change. What would be the driver? Is there some way to deduce it,s most likely location?
The meaning is clear. Before mankind started pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, we never had weather. Temperature and precipitation cycled smoothly through the seasons, one day very much like the next.
True fact.
@William Howard Astley –
It’s worth noting that the onset of the last deep cold period – the Little Ice Age – around 1300 A.D. was accompanied by extended drought in the southwestern United States, which, among other things, brought about the collapse of the Anasazi/Cliff Dweller civilization in the American Southwest. Today’s drought is therefore yet another possible indicator that we really are in for another Little Ice Age.
Richard Howes says:
February 14, 2014 at 12:33 pm
We need to PASS climate change bills to see what is IN climate change bills. It will work out just dandy!
——————————–
Very, very good! That is quotable.
What he probably now wishes he’d said is, “Weather practically everywhere is being affected by climate change.”
Willis Eschenbach says:
February 14, 2014 at 2:06 pm
re: Racehorse Haynes
Sorry Willis, couldn’t resist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXn2QVipK2o
heysuess says:
February 14, 2014 at 12:30 pm
“What’s that old line? ‘I’ll have what s/he’s having?’ That dude has spent too much time in the old Large Holdren Collider.”
heysuess, you almost made me spit out my rum and coke onto my keyboard! What are you, some kind of racist/nazi/homophobe/fascist/sexist/denier/troglodyte/…umm, what else can I throw in here?
Willis;
Dr. Holdren is mirroring the state of CA thoughts on climate change as noted here-
http://www.climatechange.ca.gov/
“California is leading the way with prevention measures to reduce greenhouse gases, but no matter how quickly we cut our climate polluting emissions, climate impacts will still occur. Many impacts – increased fires, floods, severe storms and heat waves – are occurring already and will only become more frequent and more costly. There are many things we can do to protect against climate change impacts.”
CA is going to be doubling down as the saying goes per a recent update from CARB
Note the “NEED FOR ACCELERATED EMMISSION REDUCTIONS” below:
“…The 2013 Scoping Plan update lays out the remaining steps to the
2020 limits set by AB 32. It moves the process forward with an approach which cuts across economic sectors to combine greenhouse gas reductions with reductions of smog-causing pollutants. It also describes the need to extend key reduction programs now underway. The 2013 update lays the scientific and technological foundation to ensure sustainable midterm and long-term emission reductions as well as public health and economic goals.”
The 2013 update incorporates the latest scientific consensus which indicates the need for accelerated emissions reductions in the coming decades to achieve climate stabilization. This update calls for a midterm statewide greenhouse gas reduction target, and specific reduction targets for each of the key sectors to guide California’s path toward an 80 percent reduction by 2050.
The 2013 Scoping Plan update includes input from a range of key state agencies. It is also the result of extensive public and stakeholder processes designed to ensure that California’s greenhouse gas and pollution reduction efforts continue to improve public health and drive development of a more sustainable economy.
To view the 2013 Scoping Plan update, click here:”
http://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/scopingplan/2013_update/draft_proposed_first_update.pdf
Holdren wants to kill 25M people, and he has an office in the White House. I’m not sure we should be laughing at him, if he were holding a sign on a street corner or teaching at a college – sure laugh, but he’s a little too high up the food chain for laughing.
pat says:
February 14, 2014 at 4:03 pm
btw how funny the President had to go to California to make his CAGW announcement. running from the snow, Obama?
pat,
Our Dear Leader ‘had’ to go to California for warmer weather golfing. He can make the American taxpayers pick up all of the bills by throwing something in that looks like presidential business. His climate change speech is high irony, given his HUGE ‘carbon footprint’ for such deceit. Apparently that was not sufficiently wasteful so he added in a Billion dollar climate slush fund to recycle some more taxpayer money into campaign contributions for socialist democrats in the 2014 and 2016 elections cycles. Now that’s real green recycling, from Our Dear Leaders elitist perspective!
Record rainfall being produced by low activity of the sun -heliopause decrease,GCR increase, cloud seeding increase
Roy Spencer further asks:
How much weather is being caused by climate change? Maybe 1 part in 1,000.
I second the observation.
Here is a paper that had been published at the NYT in 1996. It discusses multiple studies which researched the disappearance of the Anasazi ib the 12th century…http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~johnson/articles.anasazi.html
Of note in the paper, is one thought that the reason for them leaving their homeland “prior” to the start of the Great Drought of 1270s was that they had already lived through these harsh droughts before. This one was simply the last straw, and perhaps the leader/s at that time understood the signs of what was coming. The Great Drought, of course, happens to coincide with the LIA, making it an effect of a solar grand minimum. Another study mentions that the real problem with the drought was that the Anasazi could not move to local higher ground and farm, because the higher ground was too cold, so too dry where they were and too cold in the nearby higher country. Interesting thoughts, especially since the approach of the next grand minimum is now considered to be nearby.
” Chad Wozniak says:
February 14, 2014 at 4:35 pm
@Paul Coppin –
As a reformed academic myself, I can testify as to how far back the academic disease (i.e., institutionalized ignorance and stupidity pretending to be learning and knowledge) goes – I left academia in 1973 having had quite enough, thank you.
About all these people’s credentials do for them is to make them arrogant and think they are morally and socially superior. In my observation, for a huge majority of academics, their education leaves them knowing less that is factual about the world, even about their own specialties, and less able to engage in rational discourse, than ordinary educated laypeople. They are actually inferior, not superior, to the people for which they harbor such contempt.
Holdren’s case is an example of this, but is also compounded by misanthropy, perverse motives in general, and just plain mean-spiritedness (to “de-develop” the United States can only be taken as the mantra of a vandal, a wastrel, a hatemonger). He is a particularly maleficent, evil personage whose ambitions must be frustrated at all costs.”
Chad, here is my take on the current contretemps. This is all a reversion to “superstitious man”. It is all about us. Whenever, back in olden times, there was a terrible natural event, humans supplicated their gods, making sacrifices, and trying to atone for their sins. Today’s shamans are trying to convince us that whenever something bad happens, it is our fault, and we must atone.
The sheer arrogance that WE can control the weather, by committing sins against Mother Gaia, and then “correcting” those sins, smacks of idolatry, compounded by ignorance- aided and abetted by the scientific vacuity of those “reporting” on the science, is laughable.
@Willis Eschenbach-You should ask me to relate to you the tale of Nick Stokes and the Just So Story some time.
I picked up that quote early this morning and immediately thought “Here’s the most idiotic quote of the day!”. I knew you would pick it up too.
I don’t quite know what Nick Stokes is trying to say, Willis, but if we were to follow the advice of W.M. Briggs we would have to say that statistics has nothing to do with whether it is getting warmer. If you want to know the answer to that question you just look at the temperature data at the end points of interest. Statistics can only be of interest if you are trying to fit a model to some sort of temperature time series, you know like those cycles that you are plagued with. I know that you occasionally read his website so you can’t plead ignorance. 😉
catweazle666 says:
February 14, 2014 at 1:14 pm
I blame the 1976 black microdot.
http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/show_image.php?i=lsd/lsd_microdots4.jpg
14 Feb: Discovery: Ian O’Neill: One in Four Americans Don’t Know Earth Orbits the Sun. Yes, Really
Dear Science Communication Professionals: We have a problem…
And then, today, the National Science Foundation (NSF) delivered news of a pretty shocking poll result: around one in four Americans (yes, that’s 25 percent) are unaware that the Earth orbits the sun. Let’s repeat that: One in four Americans — that represents one quarter of the population — when asked probably the most basic question in science (except, perhaps, “Is the Earth flat?” Hint: No.), got the answer incorrect…
But wait! I hear you cry, perhaps the NSF poll was flawed? Perhaps the poll sample was too small? Sadly not. The NSF poll, which is used to gauge U.S. scientific literacy every year, surveyed 2,200 people who were asked 10 questions about physical and biological sciences. On average, the score was 6.5 out of 10 — barely a passing grade. But for me personally, the fact that 26 percent of the respondents were unaware the Earth revolves around the sun shocked me to the core…
Perhaps I’m expecting too much of the U.S. education system? Perhaps this is just an anomaly; a statistical blip? But then, like the endless deluge of snow that is currently choking the East Coast, another outcome of the same poll appeared on the foggy horizon of scientific illiteracy: The majority of young Americans think astrology is a science…
But there is a small glimmer of hope. According to the same NSF poll, the vast majority of Americans seem to love science…
You can read detailed results of the NSF poll here (PDF).
http://news.discovery.com/space/astronomy/1-in-4-americans-dont-know-earth-orbits-the-sun-yes-really-140214.htm
Great article and quote. I am sending this link in case you may have missed it. Enjoy your blog.
http://dailycaller.com/2014/02/13/top-8-explanations-for-why-global-warming-is-on-pause/