Andrew Revkin Loses The Plot, Episode XXXVIII

Ouch! That’s going to leave a mark.

Ouch! That last para stings!
Willis!, stop beating around the bush. Tell us what you really think!

Andrew should watch this excellent documentary where Hans Rosling corrects some widespread misunderstandings about population growth http://www.gapminder.org/videos/dont-panic-the-facts-about-population/

Revkin meant adding another China to the PRESENT GLOBAL POPULATION, which adds up to two China’s seeing as the PRESENT GLOBAL POPULATION includes China.
PRESENT GLOBAL POPULATION INCLUDING CHINA: 7.24 billion
PLUS EXTRA CHINESE POPULATION: 1.40 billion
PRESENT POPULATION PLUS REVKIN’S EXTRA CHINA : 8.64 billion

Revkin is a perfect illustration of who the REAL denialists are: the alarmists who ignore the new Holocaust caused by carbon policies (33,000 dead from hypothermia in the UK last year, 2 million Africans dead from starvation thanks to the ethanol program).
@Charles Battig – this is also the program proposed by der Fuehrer’s witchcraft advisor, John Holdren, except that he wants to knock the population down to 1 billion.
Global warming alarmism is MASS MURDER. Global warming alarmism is GENOCIDE.

Reading the comments posted on Revkin’s article give one hope that people are waking up. Revkin should be ashamed.

Excellent post Willis,
Just in case someone has not seen this yet;
http://drtimball.com/2014/overpopulation-the-fallacy-behind-the-fallacy-of-global-warming/

Way too kind.
Revkin is the definition of; Useful idiot.
Willis, I hope you realize you probably bought Andy’s blog another stay of execution by this traffic you have directed to his site.
I stopped visiting some time ago, as the man blithers.
I still wonder if he is wilfully blind or definitely deluded.
However the more important point, this fear of humanity, our numbers will kill us all, is the core of CAGW.
Every one of these concerned citizens I personally have argued with, dismiss the abuse of science, claim the social good of restricting energy for human use justifies the lies and when pinned down, to a man/woman have then launched into a tirade about the population explosion.
And justify the destruction, carbon dioxide mitigation policies, have wrought on the poor as necessary to save the atmosphere.
A depiction of smug believers of eugenics, secure in the righteousness of their cause, would hardly be satire..

“…particularly when he is nothing but a pathetic PR shill for bogus science and disingenuous scientists …”
Seems that everyone you disagree with is a contemptible slime, Willis. I disagree with Revkin on just about everything, and marvel at his apparent credulity in climate matters, but on a personal level he’s never struck me as anything but sincere and well meaning. For a warmist, he’s quite willing and open to discuss opposing points of view.

Already the new global scare takes shape, the BBC had a programme with a world famous statistician Hans Rosling i think? which states the population will level and then fall!

Interesting, 7.24bn People If each had a space of 4′ X 6′ you would require 173.76bn Sq’ of space or 6323 Sq Mi. At 10,900 sq mi, the entire world population could fit on 3/5 of the space of Hawaii

Roger A. Pielke Sr. says:
February 22, 2014 at 12:31 pm
Always someone who doesn’t like the way the sausage gets made.
Isn’t this the same Revkin who described Greenland ice in units of Manhattan’s melted?
Same guy who describes downwelling infrared radiation in “Hiroshima bombs” added?
Yeah don’t want to question his numbers – cause that would be rude.
Roger, the thing is I don’t want to wake up one morning to discover I’m living in a Venezuelian analog, due to excessive politeness.

Thanks, Roger.
And a note to Willis Eschenbach about carelessness (I agree that my 2007 population math – there from the first day of the blog – badly needs updating; leaving it up unchanged this long was careless).
Despite repeated references to David Victor in the introduction to the Denialism post, you somehow missed that it was the text of a lecture by him at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
All of the assertions you complain about are his.
This is a guest post – kind of like yours here at WUWT.
I’m sure Anthony doesn’t agree with everything you wrote. I don’t agree with everything David said. But it’s important in open forums to air a range of views.
As for your lapdog references, etc., sheesh….
(Accidentally posted under an unrelated WordPress ID a minute ago.)
[Thank you for the response. If so, to maintain traceability and accountability, should the “unrelated” item be deleted? Mod]
[Andy’s identical comment under “pacebrazil2014” – deleted, and no I don’t agree with this post entirely. – Anthony]

This is 2014 and he is talking about conscripting the people of 2050 to our vision of future needs. That is the equivalent of our being handed a world designed by the futurists of 1978. If one could bring the most brilliant of minds forward from 1978 to today that person would be a babe in the woods around our contemporary technology and the way time has change our world. Nobody would listen.
Mr. Revkin – you sir are an imperious ass and a moron today and you would considered the same in 2050 should any of your vacuous screeds survive.

I’ve long suspected that the real ‘Green’ agenda behind AGW and ‘de-carbonising’ our society is a population cull of some sort. Having an interest in demographics – it was once an essential part of a ‘planning’ role I filled – I have tried to follow the world population trend ever since, and while it does seem likely that 9 billion will be achieved, the interesting question is; where will the biggest growth occur. At present Europe’s population is ‘growing’ only because os inward migration. This is true of the UK, North America and Australia as well. China has recently relxed its ‘one child’ policy, because there are now around 1.6 males for every female and a large proportion of their younger males will never find a marriage partner. India, despite its growing population, set to equal or overtake China’s in the not too distant future, faces a similar imbalance, but with typically Asian ingenuity, they are trying to attract brides from Europe and elsewhere.
The big and unchecked growth remains in the poorest nations where child mortality rates are highest, though, with modern medicine, these were, until recently, falling. The anti-vaccination campaigns in many western countries, however, have impacted in ‘developing’ nations and the killers of TB, Polio, various Poxes and even plague are making a come-back. How much of that is factored into the growth predictions I do not know. I do know that southern africa, specifically South Africa, is now saddled with a population of over 50 million when the agricultural resources can probably – according to an expert I used to know – support about half that number, and would be better able to support about a third of it.
So, perhaps the Green/AGW peeps have a point. It does come down to far too many people. Now, the BIG question is – which of the world’s peoples should be culled …

I think we usually denote precision by the number of decimal places, and since Andy said “nine” billion, which has no decimal places, rather than “9” billion or “9.0” billion or “9,000,000,000.0”, he’s rounding to the nearest billion, (don’t we all ?) and because China is closer to “one” billion than “two” billion, twice China’s “one” billion is “two” billion, which added to “seven” billion makes “nine” billion.
Roughly.

What I find most interesting about Revkin’s article is the language. He consistently uses “Denialist”, “Denialism” instead of “Denier”, “Denial”. And it isn’t just Revkin doing it – most of the people he quotes are doing it too. This looks to me like yet another orchestrated language shift along the lines of global warming –> climate change –> climate weirding –> etc. It is bizarre the way they keep switching language. Who decides these things?
Anyway, as people do not speak of Holocaust denialists or Holocaust denialism, this looks to me like an attempt to hide their tracks and make the smear less obvious. The new language is close enough to the old to still be offensive. But the slight distance gives plausible deniability so that if someone takes them to task over the use of the D word they can pretend we are too sensitive and it is all just a coincidence.
(I suspect this is headed for the moderation queue due to use of the D word.)

You’re both wrong. Way wrong. The UN spreadsheet to look at is the Low Fertility one, previously the Low Band. It’s the only one ever even close to accurate. It says peak at ~8bn in 2045 or so, declining continuously thereafter. If you want to play Demographer, have a boo at this:
http://www.fpri.org/ww/0505.200407.eberstadt.demography.html

The population might only be going up to 9 billion by 2050, or 30% on today’s figures, but emissions are going to go up even faster. Global CO2 emissions in 1990 were 22.2 bn tonnes. They rose to 33.6 billion tonnes in 2010. By my calculation emissions will be 60 billion tonnes in 2050, or 2.7 times higher than in 1990.
The rich countries of Australia, Canada, EU, Japan and USA (ACEJU) have figures of 10.7, 11.2 and 11.0. If all the rich countries reduce their emissions by 80% (like Britain is crazily trying to do), then CO2 emissions will be still 2.3 times higher than in 1990. If, like Andy Revkin, you believe the climate catastrophe that these emissions levels will cause, then the rich countries will have done little to abte the costs of these nasty consequences, but will have to bear the huge costs of cutting those emissions. In Britain, Germany and elsewhere, these those costs are turning out to be far higher than anyone projected.

Seems to me that Andy Revkin is one of those rare breed today of journalists who will actually look at, and report, the facts as they see them. The fact that, so far, the available “facts” (consensus, IPCC repports, literature that’s passed pal review etc) happen to support anthropogenic warming isn’t his fault.
We all get frustrated that the MSM avoid reporting the glaring problems we all see in climate science, but I’d suggest that random attacks on those high profile individuals, such as Andy, who [i]will[/i] see and acknowledge the light as it becomes brighter isn’t a particularly smart move.
Which makes the fact it came from Willis, who’s an eminetly smart guy, a little peculiar. You didn’t have any of our world famous Mad Cow burgers on your recent visit here, did you Willis?

In journalism we call this a ‘gotcha’; practiced far and wide, fairly or unfairly dependent on your side in a fight. In order to determine whether this post by Willis is an out-of-line gotcha, one must return to the Revkin archives to see where (or if, place your bets) he has dabbled in the practice himself.

Maybe Andy was aware of a population projection showing China’s population having decreased by 2050 to only 880million – unlikely but possible. By some estimates China’s population may be peaking this decade and give a low range projection of a bit over a billion in 2050. For instance here: http://www.china-profile.com/data/fig_WPP2010_TotPop_TFR.htm
I’m being a bit facetious, but my point is that the one ‘China’ unit of population is very likely to be a lot smaller in 2050 than it is today.
W^3

judging by the UN statistics for 2100 not only is the climate in great shape it has gone into hyper drive great shape.
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/graph-of-day-un-population-projections.html

Overall populations numbers are decreasing mostly in Russia and Eastern Europe, that is true . It’s funny though, the numbers in places that Mr. Bush and his friends -you, for instance- used to brand as “old Europe” are growing : there are 65 millions of us French, 300 000 more every year, mostly born locally. Take a good look at the figures, and you will realise that indeed, the world population is growing, is going to keep growing for quite some time, and we are running short of space. Just try to find enough room in Delaware for the same number of families as you have bogus corporations.

so….deny them electricity for cooking warmth and cooling by pricing it out of their reach….make abortions available on every street corner….trick them with expensive medical procedures that don’t work…..deny them jobs and the ability to control their own money….limit their food and ability to buy it……………………
/snark

Over the decades we have heard a lot about over population, the population explosion but very little about the plunging fertility rates worldwide, why? Agenda is the key.
Now here is a long series of articles taking on the population issue. There are also counter arguments. It seems that aspirations via soap operas also plays a role in women wanting fewer children. Electricity is the key to the soaps however.

The Breakthrough Institute – May 8, 2013 – Martin Lewis
“In a recent exercise, most of my students believed that India’s total fertility rate (TFR) was twice that of the United States. Many of my colleagues believed the same. In actuality, it is only 2.5, barely above the estimated U.S. rate of 2.1 in 2011, and essentially the replacement level. (A more recent study now pegs U.S. fertility at 1.93.)…..
…In today’s world, high fertility rates are increasingly confined to tropical Africa…..
…fertility rates are persistently declining in almost every country in Africa, albeit slowly. Many African states, moreover, are still sparsely settled and can accommodate significantly larger populations. The Central African Republic, for example, has a population of less than 4.5 million in an area almost the size of France……
…As it turns out, the map of female literacy in India does exhibit striking similarities with the map of fertility. States with educated women, such as Kerala and Goa, have smaller families than those with widespread female illiteracy,…..
…Thus while the education of women is no doubt significant in reducing fertility levels, it is not the only factor at play……
…That television viewing would help generate demographic stabilization would have come as a shock to those who warned of the ticking global population bomb in the 1960s…..
To return to our first map, fertility rates remain stubbornly high across tropical Africa. The analysis presented here would suggest that the best way to bring them down would be a three-pronged effort: female education, broad-based economic and social development, and mass electrification followed by the dissemination of soap-opera-heavy television……”
http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/programs/conservation-and-development/population-bomb-so-wrong/
http://geocurrents.info/population-geography/indias-plummeting-birthrate-a-television-induced-transformation
http://geocurrents.info/cultural-geography/television-and-fertility-in-india-response-to-critics

w.,
I, too, find Revkin to be a sanctimonious twit. That is compounded by the fact that he is also a flat-out hypocrite.
It is useful to recall that his livelihood is entirely dependent upon his ability to pander to the mob.

I predict that in 2100 the main worry about population will be a stagnant OR the start of a declining world population. This is what is so funny about the population debate, many people’s concerns are headed in the opposite direction (whether they know it or not). They just did not think it was possible, but any observant person knew this: generally the better off people are the fewer children they have. Do not believe me take a look at Singapore, Japan etc. This is where the world is headed, gnashing and grinding of teeth over aging populations and stagnancy.

“Five myths about the world’s population”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-the-worlds-population/2011/10/26/gIQArjSWmM_story.html
“The Coming Population Crash”: The overpopulation myth
How feminism and pop culture saved Earth from getting too crowded — and are helping to avert planetary catastrophe
http://www.salon.com/2010/04/19/population_crash_ext2010/

There is plenty of land for us until 2100. Most populations of the world are around the coasts.

Bravo Dr. Tim Ball!
http://drtimball.com/2014/overpopulation-the-fallacy-behind-the-fallacy-of-global-warming/
Could it be that the IPCC was set up to dampen or reduce the world’s population? I have said in the past that it was to de-industrialize the west but maybe I was only half right. You see progressives can’t come out openly and say we need to cut the world’s population. They mask it as an attempt to deal with industrialised nations’ externalities when in fact it is an attack on the poorest most vulnerable peoples in the Third World. Indirect genocide based on the trace gas co2.

Willis: Revkin was quoting David Victor who in turn was talking of Kerry’s talk in the Philippines. Victor also contributed to a seminar at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography titled “Global Warming Denialism: What science has to say.” There was no science there, just warmists trying to find the best way to propagandize and turn the public against “denialism.” I wrote the comment below to put them in their place. This is what I said:
“First, there is absolutely no science in this, just another seminar promoting the public relations of the global warming pseudo-science. Victor talks derogatorily of ‘denialist chatter’ and opines that it is not even denialism but that ‘…what we are seeing is what psychologists call ‘motivated reasoning’ — people hear about something they abhor and they find reasons to justify their dissent.’ That perfectly defines his attitude. I happen to be a scientist and I prefer to talk about science, not propaganda. Global warming, so we are told, is anthropogenic because we are putting carbon dioxide into the air where it causes greenhouse warming. It does that by absorbing IR radiation that leaves the earth. But here is a conundrum. There is more carbon dioxide in the air now than ever before but there has been none of that greenhouse warming for the last 17 years. This extra high atmospheric carbon dioxide should warm the world but it doesn’t. True believers are so worried that they are looking for an imaginary ‘missing heat’ everywhere, including the ocean bottom, but our century is greenhouse free. Since there is no greenhouse warming now, and observations say so, we must consider the possibility that the entire greenhouse warming theory is false. Natural laws cannot be turned on or off. If the theory is false now it always has been false. But what about past warming? Very simple, use Ockham’s razor. They were misidentified by over-eager pseudo-scientists.”

richardscourtney says:
February 22, 2014 at 3:33 pm

Jimbo:
At February 22, 2014 at 3:23 pm you say
I predict that in 2100 the main worry about population will be a stagnant OR the start of a declining world population.

I disagree because I think it will be much earlier than that!
I predict that by 2050 the main worry about population will be the start of a declining world population.

I have suspected 2050 but I prefer to be conservative with my predictions. Lest I be attacked without mercy. 😉 All the signs so far do point THIS century being a defining moment for global population. To be very honest my biggest worry for humanity is not overpopulation but our eventual extinction (on planet Earth) within the next 2,000 years in our present form (conservative). I talk like this because I don’t know what is possible or will happen in 1,000 years time as regards technology, innovations, genetics, hybrids, etc.

No middle ground anymore.
That’s how wars start.
Wow.
Gotta leave an exit for the defeated foes, lest they fight to the death.

” Roger, it is just that unwillingness of you and other climate scientists to call a spade a spade that has left the field in such a shambles. Nobody is willing to say a bad word, even when people start breaking laws like Peter Gleick he just gets feted and invited to speak at the conferences. ”
there is more than one kind of toady, eh?
‘the way for evil to conquer is for good men to say nothing”
why should anybody have a problem with willis demonstrating that ‘good men DO call out the fraudsters’ and that anything less doesn’t measure up to being a ‘good man’ or maybe even a man at all?
stop feeding the beast would be more sensible, though.
hiring frauds is no less stupid. crying about getting what you paid for does what? dare to speak the name?

” It started when they all realized that their claims were built on sand … and the desperation kicked in”
i disagree, willis- i think it started when these individuals defined human beings as their prey and learned that the prey would only complain- even as they cooperate fully. this was never ever about science.
the idea of leaving a backdoor for predators is quite insane.
but that’s just one of the many insanities required for this madness to exist as it does.

INNUMERACY
a,n.ditchfield
Innumeracy is a new word, coined as a companion to illiteracy. To those afflicted by innumeracy, the dozens, thousands and millions are mere words. The Innumerate talk about billions and trillions with no concern for what they say and are prone to bad judgment when it comes to large quantities.
A sense of proportion is needed to address issues requiring insight into magnitude. One billion seconds add up to about 32 years. One billion minutes is close to 1900 years, a span of time that takes us back to the Roman Empire at the end of the century of Christ. These facts throw some light on the lack of perception of those not endowed with a mathematical background.
All grant that the planet is large, but how large is crucial in many issues. What is the content of the crust of the earth?
One cubic kilometre of the crust weighs 2.7 billion tonnes. A sphere with a circumference of 40 thousand km has a surface of 509 000 000 km². To a depth of 1000 m, the crust holds 1.366 billion billion tonnes:
1 366 000 000 000 000 000 tonnes
.Reckoning with a depth of 100 m, as readily accessible, only knocks off one zero from an astronomical number.
It is unlikely that mankind will ever assay the content of such a vast mass. Diehards will still hold as axiomatic that, ultimately, a finite planet cannot sustain infinite growth. But resources are so great that they may be regarded as infinite when compared to any conceivable human need. Does the innumerate talk about limited non-renewable resources make sense?
Common sense and mathematics make exhaustion of non-renewable resources a concept alien to mining businesses tuned into realities of supply, demand and cost. Consistent records of prices of commodities are maintained by a magazine, The Economist, since the middle of the 19th century. Far from rising in response to growing scarcity, all commodity prices have shown decline in response to abundance and falling costs. That is why feeding a human being costs, in real value, 1/8 of what it was in 1850.
An additional fact is that, ultimately, the planet is subject to the law of conservation of mass. Human consumption never subtracted one gram from the mass of the planet. All the stuff is still around in some form and may be recycled. The limit would be the availability and cost of energy, but with the advent of inexpensive fusion energy from deuterium this becomes possible. It may be claimed that controlled fusion energy has not yet become practical, but to assume that it never will be is an assumption that science and technology will henceforth remain frozen. Fusion energy is no physical impossibility on a par with perpetual energy; is an ongoing process in stars and mankind has made H bombs.
How much energy is available? Each cubic meter of seawater contains about 102.8 x 10 ²³ atoms of deuterium with a mass of 34.4 grams. It holds the equivalent to the heat combustion of 269 tonnes of coal, or of 1360 barrels of crude oil. The world resource of seawater’s deuterium is around a billion times greater than the known fossil fuel reserve.
Quantification reveals a clash of two mindsets set apart by a chasm of understanding. The innumerate camp resorts to acts of faith in experts – and soothsayers they are incapable of spotting. Those with background in hard science don’t care about beliefs. Engineers use Euclidean geometry because its propositions stand demonstrated, not because they believe in Euclid. Richard Feynman said that science is a belief – in the ignorance of experts. The hard science people are trained to mistrust all doctrines and think for themselves.
The innumerate depend on faith on what others say. When it suits them they quote a consensus in peer reviewed periodicals as the stamp of approval by higher authority. This hardens opposition to a suspect cause of propagandists. Consensus forming is a political process that has no place in science, always open to inquiry and addition of new layers of knowledge. Who peer-reviewed the work of Isaac Newton? Nobody: Newton has no peer. Einstein over fifty years wrote five hundred articles, none of them peer-reviewed. Is Relativity Theory invalid because it lacks approval by self-appointed authorities?
Getting mathematicians to believe in a consensus of soothsayers is akin to referring an obscure point of a theological dispute to an atheist.

Being an optimist, I have faith in the overall goodness of mankind.
Many times in the worlds history an evil has bought mayhem to
mankind, but in the fullness of time has been overcome.
This latest evil created, not for the first time by bad science,
shall also be overcome. Revkin et al are only useful idiots in
the grand evil and know not what they do.
Mankind was given the instruction “go forth and subdue the world”
I take this to mean to make the world a safe and suitable place for mankind.
Transforming the entire planet into the best garden of eden possible.
Useful idiots are a road block to progress, that shall be overcome.

Terry says:
February 22, 2014 at 1:01 pm
…………………..
The killer point, though, is that human activity stands accused of driving climate change. The win-win strategy is population reduction which mitigates both risks. Focussing only on CO2 reduction is unlikely to be effective with the upward pressure on resource consumption as improved living standards are pursued. A much more difficult challenge with moral and religious implications. However If we don’t address the population issue directly, any action on CO2 will ultimately be futile.

Are you out of your mind? WTF are you talking about? Please beef up your assertions. All I see are your BS words. How do YOU propose to reduce population??? Will you be among those reduced??? I wait for your reply.

Hi Willis,
Not to reopen an old argument, but Mann didn’t “splice two datasets together and spread peanut-butter on the splice so no one noticed.” The Nature paper in question had both the reconstruction and historical temperature records as separate curves, both clearly labeled. It was Jones and others who spliced them together without labeling for the cover of a WMO report.
Here is the Nature paper in question for reference: http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/shared/articles/mbh98.pdf

After years of reading and having this site as my dearest on the web, I need to leave a reply – something I haven’t done for years since I kicked a Usenet habit. This … almost dissing Willis and asking, even demanding, this website be without personal attacks and sticking to science. My. Had this site been another website without deserved personal attacks and the fireworks that is a Willis’ or a Monckton’s it wouldn’t be what it is – a site of such proportions it actually has an impact. And we would be so far worse off for it. Willis, thanks for your writings.

Willis Eschenbach says:
February 22, 2014 at 5:31 pm
===============
Damn, when you prod Willis you better be ready.
I forgot about all that other stuff you speak of (not my doing).
I liked the “precious” inference, I guess my writing needs work.
All the best.

Revkin is part of the great NYT tradition that pushed eugenics, dismissed Robert Goddard’s work on rockets in space because rockets could not work with no air to push against, and covered up Stalin’s political mass murder. And that is just a few highlights of the NYT getting it wrong. Revkin is a willing schill for those who have profited from misleading people about climate. That he would also mislead people about population is not surprising. This sort of basic deception appears to be a pattern he is very comfortable with.

in Australia, we have science reporter, Robyn Williams, who fronts two radio shows for the taxpayer-funded ABC – The Science Show and Ockham’s Razor.
i heard a repeat of an ABC “The Naked Scientists” program recorded at the AAAS in Chicago, this morning, & a condensed transcript plus audio is on the Cambridge University “Naked Scientists” website:
ABC Naked Scientist: Chris Smith: Naked at the AAAS
Do scientists resort to propaganda to defend climate change? How do we deal with evolution unbelievers? How do governments and policy-makers decide what science should be funded? Where will the next generation of communicators come from? Why are western countries spending more on baldness than malaria? Live at the AAAS 2014 meeting in Chicago, panellists David Willetts, the UK Minister for Universities and Science, Robyn Williams, of the Science Show on the ABC, MIT Enterprise Forum president, Kathleen Kennedy, IgNobel Awards founder Marc Abrahams and University of Madison-Wisconsin scientist Molly Jahn join Chris Smith to answer questions live from the audience…
CONDENSED TRANSCRIPT:
My name is Chris Smith otherwise known as the Naked Scientist. We’re here at this conference with people from all over the world who are authorities in their own rights and we’ve been hearing about lots of discoveries and challenges that are going on…
Now, the AAAS meeting is all about science and innovation…
ROBYN WILLIAMS: Robyn – Well first of all, a point about entrepreneurship which I find rather fascinating. We mainly think about great entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, but a point made by Professor Mariana Mazzucato, who’s at the University of Sussex and she specialises in innovation is that if you take Steve Jobs’ wonderful invention kind of, the Smartphone, all seven technologies and scientific discoveries for that device came from state-funded campuses and he put them together. It wasn’t done in his firm. It was done at state-funded universities. So, we need to bear that in mind…
***Joel Veness, science journalist. Like most good ideas at this conference, this question came from some spirited drinks we had after the session yesterday. Climate deniers often use the tools of propaganda to further their campaign. Should science be embracing these similar tools?
Chris – What propaganda?
Joel – Yeah.
Marc – Propaganda and lies, that’s what you’re asking?
Joel – Maybe not lies because that goes against the whole principles of science I guess, but maybe propaganda?
Chris – Marc?
Marc – It’s difficult. Arguments between somebody who wants to discuss whatever the topic is and somebody who simply wants to stick their foot out and trip the other person, they’re not fair fights in either direction. Does anybody here have any guidance for anybody in dealing with that?
Kathleen – I’ve been doing a lot of work in Russia lately. I was actually in Moscow 4 weeks ago, I think. It’s interesting, this propaganda question that there’s in society like that. there is still this idea of – I’m in meetings and often they talk about science innovation policy that they’re trying to build that we should just do that in the innovation Marcets. They sort of talk about – if they talk about it enough, things will happen. It’s such a counter thinking to how science and technology is done here and in the UK I’m sure. That it’s a very much a bottom up type thing and I think propaganda is about being a top down methodology. And so, I think that there are certainly places in the world that are trying to do that and they think if they push it down enough that it will happen. My thinking is that I see the way science works here and I don’t know that – it seems to me, counter the way that science actually happens…
David – Yes, I think it will be dangerous to get into propaganda because the origins of propaganda is propagating the faith and science has to be a rational and sceptical inquiry. I think the problem with the climate change deniers is that they’ve taken one of the tools of science which is scepticism and taken it to such an extreme. It’s become a new form of kind of irrationality. I think where science has to get it right is, how sceptical you can be. If you’re being asked to believe that almost all major western scientists and researchers working in this discipline are engaged in a kind of organised conspiracy, at that point, calling it scepticism doesn’t capture then the sort of irrationality of it. So, I think getting the balance, getting the scepticism right is the best approach.
Marc – Rather than going for the tools of propaganda.
Robyn – It just so happens, I did my programme the Science Show, the first one in August 1975 and one would guess it was Lord Ritchie Calder and he happened to be talking about the energy crisis then back in 1975. And he said, “Amongst other things, we’ve been so concerned about the use of oil and coal, and fossil fuels that this is going to change the atmosphere and affect the climate drastically. We’ve been talking about this since 1961 and here we are in ’75 and no one has done anything yet.” Which was, when I heard it back, rather chilling. But I think what has been shown Naomi Oreskes who was at San Diego and is now at Harvard in her book “Merchants of Doubt”. As Marc said, what one side is using is rational argument and trying to get the information over and it’s complex. When there’s something that knocks their ideas, they write a 20-page article which is published in one of the journal which their mates read and on the other side, the people who are knocking climate science are using all the techniques of advertising, of propaganda and the sowing of doubt. Naomi Oreskes is sighting the tobacco companies who, for 40 years or more were trying to say that cigarettes may be okay. There is doubt about the science. So, it’s unequal and I think it’s time the scientists really got up, didn’t use propaganda, but use short, sharp sentences and fought equally.
***Chris – And stun guns might help as well.
Robyn – Yes…
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/podcasts/naked-scientists/show/20140214-1/nocache/1/?cHash=7cc4c94970a73724aa3bd0a2037b8257&tx_nakscishow_pi1%5Btranscript%5D=1
***Joel Veness: find proof anywhere online that shows Veness is a science journalist. i have found nothing whatsoever.
however, Veness was previously with UNSW &. on his website heading, he is now Adjunct Professor at University of Alberta in Canada, tho his own website says he moved from Sydney to the UK. who knows or cares, but he’s into REINFORCEMENT LEARNING, which sounds very much like PROPAGANDA to me:
Joel Veness: GOOGLE SCHOLAR
University of Alberta
Artificial Intelligence – Reinforcement Learning – Data Compression
http://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=_iYrAxEAAAAJ&hl=en
much, much more craziness in the transcript at The Naked Scientists/AAAS link.

“””””…..alan neil ditchfield says:
February 22, 2014 at 4:57 pm
INNUMERACY
a,n.ditchfield
Innumeracy is a new word, coined as a companion to illiteracy. To those afflicted by innumeracy, the dozens, thousands and millions are mere words. The Innumerate talk about billions and trillions with no concern for what they say and are prone to bad judgment when it comes to large quantities…..”””””
I found your innumeration of the world’s Deuterium resources to be very interesting, and also the existence of hydrogen bombs as evidence that fusion energy is doable, even if not yet demonstrated in controlled fusion.
I have often read statements to the effect that all the energy the world needs can be obtained from the deuterium in just the top 1/16th of an inch of the water in San Francisco Bay. Of course SF Bay is much smaller than it used to be, so I don’t know if that is still a good number.
Also, there is some doubt that the top 1/16th inch of SF Bay, is actually water.
But more importantly; do you know for a fact, that those H bombs you mentioned are actually deuterium ones ??
The …1D2 + 1D2 -> 2He3 + 0n1 + 3.27 MeV reaction is not yielding a whole lot of energy, and it is not particularly easy to start, in terms of reaction crossection at a given Temperature, plus the neutron radiation is a bit of a safety issue. Even smaller crossection is the alternative :
….1D2 + 1D2 -> 1T3 + 1H1 + 4.04 MeV , but eventually that tritium has to give up a neutron.
….1D2 + 1T3 -> 2He4 + 0n1 + 17.60 MeV has the largest crossection and yields the most energy, plus that pesky neutron, and is the easiest one to do. I have zero knowledge about which
reaction(s) have been used; but I doubt that it will be free / cheap, however they do it, or clean either. There are other reactions more interesting, but probably damn hard to do under control.
Then there is the problem, that gravity sucks, which is why the sun works. But electromagnetism pushes; and then what the hell is it going to push against to squish the fuel ?? Good luck on that; and check out Earnshaw’s theorem.

How do you negotiate with a parasite?
The great global warming scam has been a real winner in the game of robbing the many to enrich the few.
Doom, damnation and salvation are always the key memes of mass manipulation.
Now lets look at who is doing this.
Our governments, especially the bureaucratic branches of our governments.
So either these bureaus are staffed with idiots or power hungry thieves, or they have a great mission.
Me I say fools and bandits, the government payroll has always attracted the most lazy, clueless and greedy.The great mission concept does not compute, what with the post office and motor vehicle branch, Obama care…
Government has grown like a cancer for the last 5 decades, critical mass must have been reached in the 1980s and the IPCC was formed.
Seems the parasites are foolish and greedy enough to assume that they shall rule over the productive peoples of this world.
The parasite now believes it shall dictate the behaviour of its host.
The Greeks who gave us Democracy, called this Kleptocracy.

I think what we’re seeing here in the climate wars is analogous to what’s happening today in the Ukraine, in Venezuela, and even in Syria. Low level warfare between two sides that despise each other can stay hidden beneath the thin veneer of “civility” for a while, but that is only a temporary situation. Either the situation is resolved, or sooner or later open warfare always breaks out, and that only ends when one side definitively wins, and one side definitively loses.
There is no more civility left in the Climate Wars; once one side abandons it, it is foolishness for the other side to cling to such a thing- you get no rewards for “style points”. But that means the warfare is out in the open now, and there is no turning back, not even for those who wishfully think that they could stay free from it.
The warmists have been trying to destroy the careers and reputations of the skeptics for quite some time now; suddenly they realize that we are gaining the ability to strike back at them in the same fashion. This is going to get a lot uglier before it gets better, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop that. Things have already gone too far, and for too long.

Revkin has been and continues to be a Toady for members of The Team. He spins the truth and lies and is deceitful. He is following his own particular agenda. These are facts Ladies and Gentlemen. Nobody can truthfully deny this. Sitting here on the sidelines I see Mongrel (read variations that are not genuine) Climate Scientists that Revkin admires so much spin their science output to suit their own agendas. They have been doing it for years. Calling Revkin out is entirely appropriate. ALL True Climate Scientists should climb down from their Ivy Towers and make a habit of doing this. The public would thank them.

Apparently Mr. Revkin reads this blog.
Is it possible he believes calling skeptics ‘deniers’ is really that different from calling African Americans “ni**er”? Both terms serve to end conversation, delegitimize those who disagree with you and end all discussion. Odd behavior from someone whose job is allegedly about communication.
The question is why shouldn’t skeptics pile on point out when he makes idiocratic mistakes, plays lap dog for AGW promoters, etc., if he is just another cowardly bigot pushing an agenda?

Willis Eschenbach, you are super sharp mathematical analyst with an amazing life-experience build up of knowledge about the atmosphere and oceans. I learn a great deal from your posts on WUWT. Thank you and please continue with your contributions. I have great empathy with the current situation with your father-in-law. We old men who have been through these tough times have great appreciation for those who help out in difficult times. hang in there.
Roger A. Pielke Sr. you are very powerful hero of all of we climate skeptics. I think I understand your approach to the Andrew Revkin issue. An effort to maintain professional contact and improve the personal relationship so that he might give some consideration to your work in the future seems like a good approach.
I align myself with all of my fellow skeptics who have been highly offended by Revkin’s frequent attacks on us and his very abusive name calling while he gives unwavering support for the climate alarmists.t
As a Journalist and a Professional Meteorologist I feel it is important to never stoop to name calling and personal attacks on those who take the other side in scientific debate.
I am professionally convinced there is no significant man-made global warming, has been none in the past and is no reason to fear any in the future. I am convinced that carbon dioxide is an essential trace gas, not a pollutant, and not a significant greenhouse gas. I will debate Revkin and all of his alarmist friends as long as I am alive.
It is a very difficult situation and very frustrating that the issues have become political, almost religious in its fervor, a key environmentalists agenda driven debate and an issue that is funded by billions of tax dollars that entrap major organizations and institutions into accepting the alarmists positions.
Despite all of this I will not stoop to calling Gove, Mann, et al names and being personally abusive. Only fifth graders who have run out of reasonable arguments stoop to name calling.
Join me on the high road, please, one and all.

You beat me to it, Willis.

b4llzofsteel says:
February 22, 2014 at 9:50 pm
So, caring for your father-in-law gives you the excuse to behave like a rabid dog, Eschenbach?
———————————————————————————————————————–
That’s not only below the belt, it’s taking a valid, if robust, discussion into the playgorund.

By 2050 the US will have lost its Baby Boomer population of 79 million. Birth rates here are down to 63 per 1,000 women aged 15-44.
Does anyone believe that by 2100 there won’t be at least one nuclear war that greatly reduces world population?

Willis + 10

Typo: I am going to make a point of NOT accommodating lies.
[Fixed. -w.]

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/02/22/andrew-revkin-loses-the-plot-episode-xxxviii/#more-103648
dbstealey says:
February 22, 2014 at 6:01 pm
I fully agree with richardcourtney’s comment @1:41 pm above. Richard quotes ‘Terry’:
“Growth in human population is the real problem…”
No, it isn’t. Population growth is not a problem at all.
—-l
Just to clarify: do you feel that population growth can never be a problem (for humans as a whole) under any circumstances?
As the statement stands, it seems a bit extreme to me. I feel that some are too intent on “culling the unnecessary ” (amongst which I assume they don’t include themselves or their offspring) but from a group perspective I think that when the ratio of humans to resources in a certain area climbs, a point could be reached where the amount of people are the problem. One solution is to expand to new areas, but this presumes that there are always new areas available and raises the issue of who should go and who should stay. Another solution is to control the birthrate, which leads to the question of personal liberty.
If there were a consensus (since I don’t think it is so much a scientific as a political issue) as to how much resources each person is entitled to (minimum and possibly maximum) and the number were used as a guide (to be adjusted according to eternal factors such as war), do you think it would be a better solution (for the group) than letting the individual decide?
I do not support the idea of the current socialist state or the CAGW hypothesis and I feel that this issue goes beyond the current battle.

Willis is correct, and gnomish nailed it for me…
“the way for evil to conquer is for good men to say nothing”
These ‘people’ are despicable, contemptible. They know their work is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of poor people yet they still push their poison into the mouths of politicians.
Revkin and other apologists are like the local townspeople near the concentration camps in WWII.
“We didn’t know what was happening in the camps”,(but we could smell the flesh burning)
This is not some senior faculty common room.
This is a dirty lowdown street fight where the opposition will use any tactic to gain advantage.
Their mentality is aptly displayed in the famous 10:10 video where they promulgate the elimination of all opposition.
My very best wishes to you Willis, and keep kicking them in the balls and gouging their eyes.

Joe says:
February 22, 2014 at 10:34 pm
Joe, actually Eschenbachs use of “lapdog” gave me the inspiration. Everybody who does not agree with Willis Eschenbach will be victim of his vicious attacks. His narcistic behavior does not really help the skeptic side of the discussion.

PRESENT GLOBAL POPULATION: 7.24 billion
Is it me or has someone been inflating this number. 3 or 4 years ago it was 5.5B then 2 yrs 6 B now 7.24B. WUWT.

Brilliant Blunders, by Mario Livio, is a lively account of five wrong theories proposed by five great scientists during the last two centuries. These examples give for nonexpert readers a good picture of the way science works. The inventor of a brilliant idea cannot tell whether it is right or wrong. Livio quotes the psychologist Daniel Kahneman describing how theories are born: “We can’t live in a state of perpetual doubt, so we make up the best story possible and we live as if the story were true.” A theory that began as a wild guess ends as a firm belief. Humans need beliefs in order to live, and great scientists are no exception. Great scientists produce right theories and wrong theories, and believe in them with equal conviction.

Willis Eschenbach says:
————————–
And you keep right on saying it, Willis Eschenbach, …… because I agree 100% with what you say and with you saying it for others to read or hear.
Enough of this damnable Political Correctness whereby ONLY the bleeding heart liberals, troughfeeders, racists, sexists, bigots, hypocrites, partisan politicos, etc. have assumed they have the God given Right to DETERMINE what is PC and what is not PC.
A liar is a liar, a thief is a thief, a troughfeeder is a troughfeeder and a devious, dishonest, disingenuous, despicable person is a devious, dishonest, disingenuous, despicable person and they themselves and everyone else should be told that they are.
And especially the liberals and troughfeeders who really hate and detest any of the aforementioned persons being “outed” for what they are ….. simply because they know very well that such actions by honest people threaten their own livelihood and way of life, ….. thus they have to protect all of the aforementioned in order to protect themselves.
Josephus said it best when he said …..
“Now I cannot but think, that the greatness of a kingdom, and its changes into prosperity, often becomes the occasion of mischief and of transgression to men, for so it usually happens, that the manners of subjects are corrupted at the same time with those of their governors, which subjects then lay aside their own sober way of living, as a reproof of their governor’s intemperate courses, and follow their wickedness, as if it were virtue, for it is not possible to show that men approve of the actions of their kings, unless they do the same actions with them”. (Flavius Josephus – 37- 100 AD)

richardscourtney says:
February 22, 2014 at 1:41 pm
………….
The world population is projected to peak around 2050 and then to decline. There are several reasons for this. Of most importance is that poor people need large families as ‘insurance’ to care for them at times of illness and old age. Affluent people can pay for that ‘insurance’ so do not need the costs of large families…..

Agreed. Furthermore, high infant mortality pushes for more kids. And this is why as people’s wealth / standards of living, education, health improve they tend to have fewer kids. The education of girls directly / indirectly helps too.
Many people tend to think that ‘over breeding’ has always been a Third World problem. A quick peek into history reveals high birth rates in for example the UK, USA, Germany etc. As they became better off birth rates dropped. I know this is a very simple take on the issue but it is happening at varying rates.

Health in England (16th–18th c.)
The average mother had 7-8 live births over 15 years. Unidentifiable fevers, and the following list of diseases, killed perhaps 30% of England’s children before the age of 15 – the bloody flux (dysentery), scarlatina (scarlet fever), whooping cough, influenza, smallpox, and pneumonia.
https://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/teaching-modules/166

Families and households got smaller throughout the 20th century. Women in the late 19th century gave birth, on average, to 4.6 children during their lifetime. Having ten or more children was not uncommon. By the 1950s the average had fallen to 2.19 children per woman and by the end of the century London’s ‘fertility rate’ was 1.76 children per woman.
http://www.20thcenturylondon.org.uk/theme/home-family

FT – June 3, 2013 11:56 pm
Demographics: Birth rate fall and prospect of longer life cloud Mexico’s future
…The dramatic demographic shift in Mr Velasco’s family mirrors almost exactly the wider trends at work in Mexico over the past 50 years or so. From an average of almost seven children per woman in the 1960s, the birth rate has fallen to roughly two today….
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4b531a9e-c766-11e2-9c52-00144feab7de.html#axzz2u9he8G8F

Some people might argue that condoms are so cheap. Cheap to whom? According to the IMP the poorest country in the world “Based on Gross Domestic Product (PPP) Per Capita 2009-2013” is Congo – Kinshasa. That is $394.25 for 2013 divide by 365 days and you get an income of $1.07 per day. Now you have a stark choice: food or a condom?

Oooops! I meant
“…According to the IMF the poorest country…”
Source
http://www.gfmag.com/component/content/article/119-economic-data/12537-the-poorest-countries-in-the-world.html#axzz2u9lg0caa

The problem isn’t Revkin’s math skills so to speak.
The problem is that like so many activists…they fail to update their math/viewpoints when new data/facts become available.

george e. smith says:
February 22, 2014 at 7:43 pm
Well my local talk radio station, has an evening talk host (weekdays), name of John Bachelor. A usually interesting guy, with often more interesting guests, from all over the world, and news gamut.
So just the other night (thur or fri) he has on Andrew Revkin, who, being from NYT is the world’s leading expert on climate. So Revkin spouts the usual CAGWMMCC as if he hadn’t seen any evidence for the last 17 years and five months.
So Bachelor laps it all up, and effectively appends his stamp of credibility to Revkin’s authoritative stature.
Sorry John; Revkin did nothing to raise his stature; but he surely did send yours right into the toilet bowl.
So there’s another talk radio Icon; whose reputation has bit the dust. It’s getting like the WWE and MMA, are about the only things one can trust any more. But I am also saving batteries in my portable radio.

John Batchelor (correct spelling) indeed runs a most interesting show, a great source of commentary and analysis of events from all over the world, as well as often fascinating interviews with authors of books on historical subjects. However, John sometimes does fail to challenge a guest on a controversial topic, instead accepting the guest’s premises and following them to their conclusions. I suspect this is deliberate, to avoid being typed a partisan; John is more Brian Lamb than Rush Limbaugh.
I should add though, that Robert Zimmerman (host of a website called “Beyond the Black,” about space and astronomy) is a frequent guest. Bob Zimmerman is clearly a WUWT reader and he has led John into vociferous reporting on the errors of the Warmists and their camp followers. I don’t know if John agrees with Bob’s exposés of the faux science that informs the Climatist movement, but I doubt if John would identify himself with Revkin and the Climate Parasites.
/Mr Lynn