After reading the transcript of her radio interview, I think she’s finally had her “jumped the shark” moment. From Andrew Bolt’s report in Australia, Oreskes sounds even more off the rails than the always wrong doomer Paul Ehrlich. Bolt writes:
Just how crazy are the world’s leading global warming alarmists? Tony Thomas investigates the strange case of Naomi Oreskes, and how the ABC’s Robyn “100 metres” Williams didn’t even blink an eye:
Global warming is going to “wipe out” every Australian man, woman and child, according to Naomi Oreskes, the much-quoted Professor of the History of Science at Harvard. Revered by catastropharians the world over, she was a guest on a recent edition of Robyn Williams’ Science Show on Radio National…
The glum forecast is in her latest book, The Collapse of Western Civilisation (co-author Erik Conway)…
What Oreskes predicts is that some people in northern inland regions of Europe, Asia and North America, plus some mountain people in South America, will survive the killer warming. These lucky ones are able to “regroup and rebuild. The human populations of Australia and Africa, of course, were wiped out,” she says, writing from a viewpoint some 400 years into the future…
But Oreskes forecasts something much worse than the death by climate for every Australian human. She prophesises the climate deaths of puppies and kittens…
“The loss of pet cats and dogs garnered particular attention among wealthy Westerners, but what was anomalous in 2023 soon became the new normal. A shadow of ignorance and denial had fallen over people who considered themselves children of the Enlightenment.”…
Radio National’s Williams was delighted with Oreskes’ pet-panic strategy. He chimed in,
“Yes, not only because it’s an animal but it’s local. You see, one criticism of the scientists is they’re always talking about global things…And so if you are looking at your village, your animals, your fields, your park, your kids, and the scientists are talking about a small world that you know, than it makes a greater impact, doesn’t it…”
Oreskes starts The Science Show by reading from her book. Be afraid:
“By 2040, heatwaves and droughts were the norm… In wealthy countries, the most hurricane- and tornado-prone regions were gradually but steadily depopulated… Then, in the northern hemisphere summer of 2041, unprecedented heatwaves scorched the planet, destroying food crops around the globe. Panic ensued, with food riots in virtually every major city. Mass migration of undernourished and dehydrated individuals, coupled with explosive increases in insect populations, led to widespread outbreaks of typhus, cholera, dengue fever, yellow fever, and viral and retroviral agents never seen before… The European Union announced similar plans for voluntary northward relocation of eligible citizens from its southernmost regions to Scandinavia and the United Kingdom…”
The ever-credulous Williams, instead of asking Oreskes, “Mmm, you’re smoking something good?” merely observed that all of the above is “fairly shocking”…
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The thread seems to have now attracted those ripe for the following announcement:
Anyone whose mansion with a swimming pool is threatened by rising sea levels and temperatures due to human cause climate change, I consider swapping it with a detached Finnish property on a hill. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Smoke_sauna.JPG. Furry animals compare to those roaming in the tropics and come with the plot http://www.suurpedot.fi/www/en/index.php. This is a one time offer only. Think of you children. Hurry, you must act now!
The craziest part of all of this climate hysteria is that from the beginning of the 20th century to now, the entire era of the demon CO2, virtually every available measurable metric of malignant weather has been in decline. We will always be subject to subject to vagaries in the weather. I have lived for 65 years in SE Minnesota where on any given day there is always the possibility that the weather will do something that could kill you if you aren’t paying attention. Just over the period of the instrumental record temps have ranged from 110F to -40F. Although we’ve never had a tornado in town, they have hit around the area a number of times and we have had straight line winds in the 65-75 mph range on multiple occasions. Flash floods on the local tributaries are routine as well as to a lesser frequency major floods on the Mississippi. Then, of course, we get to the current time of year and the real deadly possibilities commence.
The point is that to my, admittedly somewhat biased recollection although the data seem to support me, the weather now is generally more benign than when I was a youngster. When I was a kid the local radio stations used to hold annual contests for listeners to send in their guess for the first 100 degree day of the summer. The winners were almost always nontrivial i.e. “there won’t be one” seldom won. That changed in the 70s and the contests faded away.
I just checked thru the 2014 YTD and this summer we had one high of 91F and four days of 90F. The historical average high is 84F for the entire month of July. You may recall the Midwest drought of several years ago, when it was repeatedly suggested that we were all doomed to dry up and blow away. This year at the local muni where I like to play golf you haven’t been allowed to take a golf cart off the cart paths at all for the entire season because the course has been continuously waterlogged. The Mississippi has looked as if the Spring snowmelt has continued all Summer.
To my eye the CAGW crowd’s entire methodology appears to be to take the temperature trend from the late 70s to the late 90s and straight line it out to the horizon and suggest that that is the inevitable future. However, faced with down trends in weather extremes which are much longer, their only response is “wait until manana” when it will not only quit going down but turn upwards in ways that are almost scientifically impossible.
Unfortunately we are now into the third generation of young skulls full of mush who have been victims of our modern propaganda indoctrination system where they have been drilled to believe that what things make them feel is much more important than what they might make them think. This pretty much guarantees that this kind of emotional BS will find a receptive audience.
I think what she means is, “is Old Testament, real wrath of God type stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling. Forty years of darkness. Earthquakes, volcanoes, the dead rising from the grave, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria.” from the movie Ghostbusters
Really . . . then why does it say “and on the seventh day god rested from ALL his work?
http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Genesis-2-2/
I think he’s been resting ever since.
Craziness of the Week: Naomi Oreskes , and probable for quite a few weeks to come too.
Commenter Ali Babba is now on the banned list for his ugly comment, which has been deleted along with subsequent replies.
She’s a gem for convincing people they have a real threat in green madness characters, not the points or objectives in the tirades themselves. She could single handedly move national polls away from AGW positions. Put her on every evening and during half time shows. The more exposure she gets the more the counter productive the AGW religion gets with all that fire and damnation preaching.
Is Naomi Oreskes a man or a woman?
Sort of looks like Howard Stern with a short haircut. If we watch can we see beautiful women undress and show their tits on stage?
By the laws and judicial decrees of the State of California, they are whatever they say they are. This may include male, female, both, neither, and undecided. If you’re choosy about the plumbing, avoid quick pickups when in California. If a straight male, your best bet is to get a close shave, put on a flannel shirt, go to a lesbian bar, and discuss how as a pre-op you’re nervous and would like to see examples of what it should look like after you get your work done.
[snip – over the top]
Climate Sceance
Sounds about right
😎
Silly cult.
Some will back her because they don’t know any better.
Some will back her because what she advocates is a convenient way to achieve their goals.
Some will back her because to not back her would be to admit they are wrong.
The rest? Do they think Jules Verne rather than NASA put the first man on the moon?
Scooby Doo.
The ever-credulous Williams, instead of asking Oreskes, “Mmm, you’re smoking something good?” merely observed that all of the above is “fairly shocking”
I am surprised that anyone is taken aback by this interview.
For at least four decades now the media has invited “credentialed experts” to sit beside hosts and spout hyperbolic falsehoods just so the words can be repeated yet again in public, while the anchor or talk host simply nods. In this way the network crew cannot be found to be liars themselves, they are merely purveyors of the most ghastly brain-garbage… all in the hopes of furthering some agenda thought, by poorly educated teleprompter readers, to be noble. Sadly, repetition equals reality for way too many people in this world.
We use irrigation to water many crops, which of course is vulnerable to planning based on scary water models, and government over-regulation of the water supply. Andrew Bolt thoroughly covered the story of the Wivenhoe Dam and the disasters caused by the use of Global Warming predictions to manage dam water and Desal plants.
If it comes to a drought, better to suffer through it than allow the government to shut down our water supply, control water on private property, and make water an expensive commodity which they control. Talk about Biblical proportions! Now we are talking about disaster! Talk about The Four Horsemen! As the good book says, “Let us now fall into the hand of the LORD for His mercies are great, but do not let me fall into the hand of man.”
Or as Adam Smith said, “It is the violence of well-intentioned governments which turns drought into prolonged dearth.”
Have you considered: :1. Government control over water. 2.Government then privatises water.
3. Water corporations then merge into one multinational global group.
You mean like this?
“Management of entire Perth water supply outsourced to French desalination company”
I have noticed this sort of irrational apocalyptic delusion in several elderly folks, all of whom were well educated. To me, it seems that they have a hard time coming to terms with their own physical decline and mortality; they avoid the direct confrontation and instead misdirect and outwardly project their pain. I have not seen such delusions in people who were at peace with their age and condition.
I can’t find anything on such a connection on PubMed though. Very little on apocalyptic delusions as such, and nothing on connection with age.
“Big Lies with Big Bucks can get results.”
One result they’ll get is a lot of pushback pointing out the flimsiness of this connection to “spreading maximum confusion about well-studied public threats ranging from toxic chemicals to pharmaceuticals.” They’re trying to narrow down the contrarian army of Davids to a few old-time and/or funded figures. It’s a lie by omission. As Judith Curry wrote, the contrarians that are having the most impact are academics and bloggers, not the employees of think tanks. (One early academic example: Aaron Wildavsky. But he’s been smeared as a shill because he was “affiliated” (what’s that mean?) with the Independent Institute.)
The film is also trying to shift the spotlight from the think tank scientists to their employers, tarring the employees with the think tanks’ views on chemicals and pharmaceuticals, which is a diversion unless the film is also claiming that the think tank contrarians are just hired guns who’ll parrot their employers’ views for money. (But Pat Michaels went to a think tank only because he was forced out of the U of VA for his views. And James Taylor says he was making twice his current salary as a lawyer, a job he quit to take up the contrarian cause.)
Bringing up “well-studied toxic chemicals” is double-edged: the film will get pushback about DDT, where the danger-minimizers were correct.
Another common warmist lie-by-omission I’m sure the film will employ is this one from Greenpeace: “Koch foundations contributed over $48 million to climate opposition groups from 1997 to 2008.”
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/Global/usa/report/2010/3/koch-industries-secretly-fund.pdf
Accurately worded, that would be “. . . over $48 million to groups with many positions, one of them being opposition to climate alarmism . . . .” Cato and the George Marshall foundation and others probably devote only 10% or 15% (or maybe only 5%) of their expenditures to climate-related activities. I bet most naive warmists would be shocked to learn that, and how they’ve been misled. The film will give our side a chance to expose that bit of shiftiness far and wide.
Maybe that’s what happened to the Neandertals. Couldn’t go on without kitty./snark
Doesn’t she know that predictions of things happening in a ten year time frame can be judged while you are still around. If you are predicting something make sure your time frame resolves after you and your audience are dead and gone.
Professor of science fiction. My pet is a lovely norwegian forest cat. No sign of danger there, even if the arctic has been the area of the globe where the realtive warming has been highest for the last 50 years. Up here animals, plants and people are thriving, even if the warming stopped some 215 months ago. No heatwaves in sight, no tornados, no extreme weather here. Last one was a snow storm in the middle of summer, but that was back in 1972, and even that lasted only about half an hour.
Someone hand that woman a crystal bowl and a scarf. Her predictions are un-scientific and mid-eval.