Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
My thanks again to Dr. Jane Orient, Jeremy Snavely, and the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness (DDP). I previously described how they invited me to Knoxville to speak at the DDP conference.
However, they’ve now outdone themselves and posted my speech online, and have my further thanks for doing so. Here’s the video, featuring me cleverly disguised in a coat and tie.
As I remarked in my previous post, I stole shamelessly from my past writings to make up my speech. My basic theme was, “First, Do No Harm”.
I went to the Conference thinking I’d talk about science, and I had a bunch of Powerpoint slides and everything. But then I thought better of it, and I junked my prepared speech and put together another one entirely, no slides, just stories and ideas.
I asked for questions after my presentation, but mostly what I got instead were mini-speeches, although some of them were interesting and relevant.
Best to all,
w.
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Willis, thank you. I listened to the whole talk and found it very moving and persuasive. Your meme of “making my feet the same temperature as my head” is brilliant. Perhaps something could be done with “having cool heads and hot feet” … Hmm…
I agree that making energy more expensive for everyone a) does not significantly affect the environment and b) can be very damaging to the poor of the Earth – so the analysis can safely ignore the Global Warming mythology.
However: I suggest that we as a planet would be wise to preserve some of the deep earth carbon for future generations. We have been extracting it at a huge rate for about 200 years, but can we keep that up for another 200? Thus: how can we motivate a gradual switch-over to renewable energy sources, without destroying lives (or civilizations)? I presume you and I agree that telling a Platonic Lie about “carbon pollution” and “Climate Change” is unethical and mischievous.
Excellent presentation, Willis. Very erudite. I think it came off the better for you personalising it in the way you did, rather than another climate presentation. The real battlelines aren’t being fought on the climate, but rather the politics, with the poor bearing the brunt of it.
Willis! You look and sound like people! Sonofagun. Now that I’m forced to think about my unspoken mind-picture of you, I suppose I was expecting a leprechaun with a large forehead in Harley leathers and flip-flops. 😉
@Willis: You’ve done quite a bit of educating from the perspective of your presentation. You’re message is quite effective to non technical folks who want to do the right thing.
I had no idea you were so soft spoken either.
Mario / AKA fan boy
It’s a bird, It’s a plane, no it’s superman. No it’s not ; it’s Willis’ eagle flying ever higher; maybe it’s a spaceship. Seriously, Mr. Echenbach, what a wonderful speech.
Stop referring to the poor as hungry etc. My income on a pension is $20,000 approximately a year, I get concessions too. On land, water and electricity. Movies, medical bulk billing, and when it is really tough the Salvos and St.Vinnies give 500 dollars a year (collectively) to help pay electricity bills. Our neighborhood centre gives 800 a year to welfare recipients for white goods and furnisher or even computer goods. We don’t pay registration on the cars we own, but we do pay for our 3rd party insurance (green slip) and rego checks. We get some really cheap hardly used clothes from the op shops. Food vouchers etc. (not regularly but occasionally, St.Vinnies also give bags of food donated) The thing is though, if you own your own home one doesn’t get rent assistance on top of your allowance. But – I bought a 5,000 L rain water tank, plumbing and pump for just over 2,000 dollars, and both the Fed and State government paid for it but for about $50.00. It is used for the laundry and laundry toilet and watering my bonsai.
But I live in a temperate cold area, Northern tablelands of NSW and our heating is necessary. I don’t heat my house I’m acclimatised and save money that way. Other than an electric blanket, which costs little and a two bar fire if we have visitors from sunny Queensland. But it is the insurances for home, contents, green slips, car expenses that cost as well as land rates even with pensioner reductions. So we are not starving in Oz. Mind you I smoke, that takes a lot of my pension, but I don’t drink nowadays for health reasons. All medication I need are only $6 a prescription, and one Hydrea is $76 per bottle if I wasn’t covered. Firewood is not used as much now as the smoke settles under any mist low in the valley. So we are adapting to the cold already. And two solar farms have quit, and a wind turbine looks to not be supported anyway.
Yes Willis you were so articulate, I enjoyed the lecture. Hope to see more.
A great talk. No reliance on slides or visual aids. Well done, Willis.
That’s the best talk I’ve heard that makes the moral case against this craze. Excellent!
Excellent job, Willis! You presented a logical approach extremely well. I hope some wild-eyed AGW proponents will see the video and perhaps get a different perspective for the manner in which they regard ‘ignorant deniers’.
Your ‘do what’s possible now and see what happens’, in my mind, makes abundant sense.
I have always been uncomfortable with the terms ‘pause’ and ‘hiatus’ to describe the current global temp situation for the reason that they imply an eventual resumption of warming. That may well be true but there are two other possibilities. The curve could remain flat or there could be some cooling as some are beginning to suggest. I don’t claim to know what will happen but it seems to me that governmental actions being taken or suggested now would be counter-productive should there be greater than expected cooling in the next two or three decades when cheaper fuel and electricity would be required. None of what will happen can be known for certain (except of course by the AGW gang) but,it would seem to be imprudent to ignore the possibility (keeping in mind that a degree or so of warming would be much easier to cope with than a degree or two of cooling).
As you say, “Do no harm.”
Willis is seen in a good number of videos on youtube. Here’s a search link:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=willis+eschenbach
The miserable youtube search tool is imprecise and will return many false positives which you can ignore.
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Willis just likes to write. I can’t stand him any more. He doesn’t call FRAUD, in a moral sense, so really he’s just a teeny tiny [trimmed], and nobody in human history likes a wimp.
Uh….
http://s6.postimg.org/jb6qe15rl/Marcott_2013_Eye_Candy.jpg
His *own* data plot, I offer.
[Cut the insults out. .mod]
Thanks for publishing my insult though, mod, but you destroyed it by ruining its subtlety. I say, stop being the top jock of skepticism.
Oh, shit, did I “insult” you?
Political correctness is your own ruin, not mine.
Let us New Yorkers free.
Who are you saving?
What single person are you saving from ruin by killing my words?
Please reveal Willis’ take on your threat of censorship of opinion, assuming you are not yourself Willis, anonymous mouse mod. Who has insulted who, here?
NikFromNYC says:
August 20, 2014 at 5:54 am
Nik, when someone like yourself starts out by saying something on the order of …
… I fear I just cancel their vote (metaphorically of course). People who “can’t stand” other people’s writing don’t bother to read it. So obviously, you’ve started out with a falsehood.
But it gets weirder in your case, because your accusation (that I “just like to write”) makes no sense at all. In this post I wrote a total of what, nine short sentences. Hardly the mark of someone who “just likes to write”.
As to your question regarding “who has insulted who[m]” here, that’s not clear. It certainly appears that you’ve done your best to try to insult me, but none of your blows have landed above my ankles … something to do with relative stature, I expect. In any case, other than a vague sense of unpleasantness and a bad smell, there’s not much trace left of your insults, so there’s no need for you to worry about the cleanup.
w.