Guest opinion. Dr. Tim Ball
I knew I was having an impact as a skeptic when I received a call from George Monbiot, reporter for The Guardian. I told him as much. I said I would answer questions about the science. Of course, the first question was about funding, because he had already determined the story and only sought quotes to fit the narrative or to pretend he had balance. I said I had never received funding from any energy company and started to talk about the science. The interview ended.
Monbiot did express outrage when the emails were leaked, but it was about the response of the CRU.
“Why was CRU’s response to this issue such a total car crash?”
He then justified their behavior because,
Climate sceptics have lied, obscured and cheated for years. That’s why we climate rationalists must uphold the highest standards of science.
Apparently struggling with what went on, he later wrote,
But the deniers’ campaign of lies, grotesque as it is, does not justify secrecy and suppression on the part of climate scientists. Far from it: it means that they must distinguish themselves from their opponents in every way. No one has been as badly let down by the revelations in these emails as those of us who have championed the science. We should be the first to demand that it is unimpeachable, not the last.
It appears he was in the dilemma because he had not functioned as a journalist, but as a messenger for the political message about global warming, that he and his newspaper favored. The deception about global warming was only effective because of the aiding and abetting of the mainstream media.
Those most active in pushing the false information were exposed in the leaked Climatic Research Unit (CRU) emails. They represented very influential media outlets including The Guardian, The New York Times, and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). They sought information by indicating their willingness to carry the message. For example, on July 23, 2009 Seth Borenstein, a national science writer for the Associated Press, sent an email to the CRU). He wrote,
“Kevin, Gavin, Mike, It’s Seth again. Attached is a paper in JGR today that Marc Morano is hyping wildly. It’s in a legit journal. Watchya think?”
WUWT identified the unprofessional nature of the relationship in a December 12, 2009 article. They were all willingly, albeit unknowingly, used by the powerful – the people they ostensibly despise.
In my recent article about the motive behind the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) deception on global warming, I challenged people to offer an alternative suggestion to my proposition that it was about political power and control. “Follow the money” was the predominant comment. It is true that for most in the lower echelons, funding and career enhancement were predominant (Figure 1).
Upton Sinclair said,
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Or as Machiavelli more pungently said, “One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.”
However, money was not the reason for the cabal who orchestrated the entire deception. They were members of the Club of Rome because of their power. Sometimes that power came from their wealth, but most were already wealthy. Some, like Al Gore or Maurice Strong, made additional money from their involvement, but that was not the motivating factor. Gore would have given all that money for the 1500 votes that kept him from the US Presidency. As Lord Acton (1837-1869) famously said, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” What is rarely quoted is the sentence that follows, which reads, “Great men are almost always bad men.” Acton elaborated on that idea with this variation,
“And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that.”
Everybody knows information is power. Control of power through control of information has evolved, like everything else. Those with power needed a conduit for their version of information. In the global warming deception, they found a media willing to be the messenger. Instead of performing their original role of exposing and limiting power, they aided and abetted.
The US Founding Fathers set up a system of checks and balances to prevent concentration of power. They knew the public did not have time to monitor what was actually going on, so, the media was given “freedom of the press” power to investigate and expose what was going on.
One part of the United States Constitution First amendment prohibits the making of any law, abridging the freedom of speech, or infringing on the freedom of the press.
In those days the media was the Fourth Estate, a term posited by Edmund Burke, author of the important adage that
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
But Burke also identified the power of the Fourth Estate when he said,
There are three estates in Parliament but in the Reporters Gallery yonder there sits a Fourth Estate more important far than they all (sic).
English poet William Cowper (1731 – 1800) summarized the power in his 1782 poem, “The Progress of Error”. The focus was already sensationalism and exploitation of fear.
How shall I speak of thee or thy power address,
The God of our idolatry, the press?
By thee, religion, liberty and laws
Exert their influence and advance their cause;
By thee worse plagues than Pharaohs land befell,
Diffused, make Earth the vestibule of Hell:
Thou fountain, at which drink the good and wise;
Thou ever-bubbling spring of endless lies;
Like Eden’s dead probationary tree,
Knowledge of good and evil is from thee!
This speaks to the control of the media up until recently. The global warming deception may be the last great fraud perpetrated on the people and promoted by the mainstream media. Today, the Internet supersedes the power of the media to control the message, and therefore be vulnerable to control by the powerful. It is why powerful people are trying to limit the Internet.
Stephen Cooper identified the role of websites, like WUWT, in his 2006 book, Watching the Watchdog: Bloggers as the Fifth Estate. It is no surprise that the growth of these web sites was coincident with the decline of the mainstream media. Just as politics overtook science, so it overtook the media, but it was the old politics of party affiliation that people despised, but still practiced in national and regional legislatures. The reaction was polarization and extremism. Politics adopted the dictum, that if you are not with me, you must be against me. Media became more and more sensationalist, so it wasn’t just the sky that was falling, but the entire universe. In both cases the facts became the casualty. Farhad Manjoo identified the result in his book True Enough: Learning to Live in Post-Fact Society. The Amazon abstract says,
Why has punditry lately overtaken news? Why do lies seem to linger so long in the cultural subconscious even after they’ve been thoroughly discredited? And why, when more people than ever before are documenting the truth with laptops and digital cameras, does fact-free spin and propaganda seem to work so well? True Enough explores leading controversies of national politics, foreign affairs, science, and business, explaining how Americans have begun to organize themselves into echo chambers that harbor diametrically different facts—not merely opinions—from those of the larger culture.
Manjoo overlooks the major problem, namely that most people don’t know the facts or how to interpret them objectively. Wikipedia is a classic example of the problem. It addresses the need for as much information, from as many perspectives as possible. These noble, but naïve, objectives were quickly abused as WUWT identified. In climate, William Connolley’s monopoly and biased control of entries, was an example. Most people have no idea whether, what they are reading is fact or fiction, or fact with a political bias.
As this was evolving education, which was always about indoctrination rather than education, failed to teach basic skills of analysis and interpretation. The word, discrimination, which traditionally meant “recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another”, became politically incorrect, socially and intellectually.
There was fierce debate about whether the CRU emails were leaked or hacked. Beyond the legal ramifications, was the important point that somebody thought that, what was going on in climate science was scientifically and morally wrong. Release date of the emails in November 2009 was to block further political action by the Conference of the Parties scheduled for Copenhagen. At that meeting, the plan was to introduce global taxation and transfer of wealth with political control that transcended national boundaries. Apparently the “leaker”, unlike Monbiot, thought that this was a bridge too far when based on false and deliberately manufactured information. Sorry folks, but the end does not justify the means.
If you do not stop this nastiness Richard Betts will hit you with his WWF fluffy toy!
Don’t forget the crying and the running away when asked to debate.
I don’t believe we/skeptics capitalize on this fact enough. Whether it be science, religion, politics, or just plain personal preferences there is never….never….a good reason not to debate/talk about issues. Only people with something to hide refuse to debate/discuss an issue. More people should be made aware of the AGW proponents’ refusal to come to the table.
Richard might be so provoked by this article that he will issue a severe ‘tsk’ rebuke to Dr. Ball – perhaps even a double ‘tsk’.
With Richard wielding the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play, his efforts can only enhance his efforts to clean up the climate debate
You mean this ‘sword of truth’????
“A leading climate scientist has presented new research findings on the increasing potential for a 4 degrees Celsius rise in global temperatures if the current high emissions of greenhouse gases continue.
The conference at Oxford University is the first to consider the global consequences of climate change beyond 2 degrees Celsius, and is jointly sponsored by University’s Environmental Change Institute, the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and the Met Office Hadley Centre.
Speaking at the international conference called ‘4 degrees and beyond’ at Oxford University, Dr Richard Betts, Head of Climate Impacts at the Met Office Hadley Centre, described the possibility of a 4 degree warming happening ‘before the end of the century’. He added that a scenario of very intensive fossil fuel burning could bring this forward by 20 years.
…In today’s presentation Dr Betts warned that 4 degrees of warming could have extreme regional implications along with major changes in rainfall. He said: ‘If greenhouse emissions are not cut soon, then we could see major climate changes within our own lifetimes.’
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090930174655.htm
Not to forget Richard Betts conclusions on that particular presentation in the run-up to Copenhagen
“Current CO2 emissions are near (but not above) upper end of IPCC
scenarios
4°C global warming (relative to pre-industrial) is possible by the
2090s, especially under high emissions scenario
Many areas could warm by 10°C or more
The Arctic could warm by 15°C or more
Annual precipitation could decrease by 20% or more in many areas
Carbon cycle feedbacks expected to accelerate warming
With high emissions, best guess is 4°C in 2070s
Plausible worst case: 4°C by 2060
http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/4degrees/ppt/1-2betts.pdf
Marion: Betts’ comment is 5 years old (2009). He may have cooled off a bit by now
Coldish,
Unfortunately not!
Richard Betts is the co-ordination of Helix
“High-End cLimate Impacts and eXtremes (HELIX)”
“At HELIXclimate.eu we are assisting decision-makers in making climate adaptation more manageable by providing a set of credible, coherent, global and regional views of different worlds at 4, 6 and 2 degrees celsius. We are sixteen organisations funded by the EU to work together to explore consequences and responses to two degrees and beyond.”
Funded by EU FP7 Cooperation ENV.2013.6.1-3: Impacts of higher end scenarios (global average warming >2 degrees celsius with respect to pre-industrial level)
Contact the co-ordinator:
Professor Richard Betts
Chair in Climate Impacts at the University of Exeter
Head of Climate Impacts at the Met Office Hadley Centre
University of Exeter
(but then I suppose it depends on which audience he is addressing!!!)
Link to he above
http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/HELIX
Environment and climate have both been deeply politicized interanitonallly to promote narrow socialist and liberal(American) Agendas.
Written motto on the building of the “The Dallas Morning News”:
BUILD THE NEWS UPON
THE ROCK OF TRUTH
AND RIGHTEOUSNESS
CONDUCT IT ALWAYS
UPON THE LINES OF
FAIRNESS AND INTEGRITY
ACKNOWLEDGE THE RIGHT
OF THE PEOPLE TO GET
FROM THE NEWSPAPER
BOTH SIDES OF EVERY
IMPORTANT QUESTION
Unfortunately, as we all know, this motto is no longer valid in mainstream media today, especially the last 5 lines, and even more especially in the climate-change debate.
Why? The majority of journalists (as well as teachers) don’t want to be neutral service providers in the public interest any more but see themselves as missionaries for their political agenda which is usually green and left-wing. They have no bad conscience about their political bias because they are convinced to belong to the superior part of mankind who will know better what is right and wrong.
So – what can we do against this wide spread arrogance and complacency in order to get a more balanced journalism again?
My answer is
NEVER BUY A NEWSPAPER OR JOURNAL WITH A POLITICAL AGENDA !!!
Does the Dallas Morning News follow that motto?
After 20+ years subscription to The DMN, I canceled because I got tired of reading what I believed to be CAGW lies on its front page and embedded in other, deeper, articles. I understand a newspaper must have ways of generating revenue, but seeing repeated CAGW lies became more than I could stand – I canceled about 4 years ago. A modicum amount of research reveals that AGW is not science, but The DMN apparently never could reach that research threshold. When I canceled, I hoped to be asked why, but no.
I’ll add that The DMN is a good paper otherwise, and that it probably upholds their motto as well as, or better, than many other papers.
Unfortunately, you run aground upon the rock of opinion. How would you separate opinion from an agenda. In fact, you can’t. Historically, journalism has never been unbiased – the point of at least one of the quotes in the lead. Journalists have personal views – at the least – and have never been shy about backing them. Shucks, if your handle is an illusion to Charlie Chaplin, you are alluding to someone with a very evident agenda.
You’re barking up the wrong tree. The motive is most likely not the promotion of a socialist agenda but instead a financial motive.
In fact, the proposed solutions are capitalistic! Like carbon trading. The proponents of a carbon tax point to capitalist economic theory (e.g. the Coase Theorem) for support.
The people that will truly benefit from a carbon trading regime are private financiers . . . not socialists.
Dear RLFG,
It is not about left or right, it is about to control or not to control. As has been said over and over again follow the money.
The problem is that the global financiers have joined forces with the International Socialists and both are finding the relationship symbiotic.
Check out “United Socialist Nations”
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/un_progress_governance_via_climate_change.html
“You’re barking up the wrong tree. The motive is most likely not the promotion of a socialist agenda but instead a financial motive. ”
Castro gained a large tropical island populated with slaves confined
to the plantation.
How is that not a financial motive?
The king on the island, in which a parade of brain dead Hollywood movie stars visit to kiss his ring-
maybe he throws great parities.
Or it seems possible an absolute ruler could have access to things unavailable to mere movie stars. Maybe a large collection of snuff films and torturing of political prisoners,
or it could just be hero worship.
“In fact, the proposed solutions are capitalistic! Like carbon trading. The proponents of a carbon tax point to capitalist economic theory ”
Well socialist economic theory doesn’t work. No socialism theory has ever worked.
But if a government nationalize the car industry and sells cars to customers, does that
make it capitalism?
And we are taking about product no one wants, but instead laws are required to be passed to force people to need it.
That’s socialism in a nut shell.
So capitalism is offering stuff that people want, socialism is forcing people to buy
stuff from something government controls and that government outlaw any other kind alternative way to get it.
It generally politically sold on idea that it provide whatever it is at cheaper price- according to socialism theories- which as said don’t actually work.
They sort of, given up selling that lie [for the moment], and tend to say it not cheaper but it’s free. But Obama said the “governmental involvement” in healthcare would lower cost and provide free stuff.
It hard to know if the idiots actually believe anything of what they are saying, but we know that when Obama said you could keep your insurance, that was a straight up blatant lie, and the plan was that the American public is to stupid to notice [or too late to change it after destroying the insurance market- or following rule once get a government program started it’s politically difficult to end it- unless of course it’s creates a pile too high of dead people].
But socialism theory starts with “idea” of giving less choices [that suppose to be main source of the lower the of costs- so everyone suppose to drive the same crappy car. Or whatever they going to sell you- whether it’s stale bread, diseased meat, exploding TV, electric cars which burn down your house, etc.
Taxing the air people breathe is not capitalism, and controlling the behavior of others has always had a monetary profit motivation to it.
Capitalism was simply honest to admit the monetary motivation in human nature, and assert that it is unavoidable in any system, and state that this is ok, as long as the means of obtaining it are done by offering to society a freely chosen service of value.
Governmental legislation to enrich a few is socialistic, through and through.
Raising taxes and introducing a carbon trading scheme is not capitalistic.
It’s crony socialism.
Solandra was not capitalism.
Wind turbines are not capitialism.
Solar panel fields are not capitalism.
Obamacare was not capitalism.
Taking over GM was not capitalism.
Running guns to Mexico is not capitalism.
Ignoring our southern border is not capitalism.
Discrimination against the non-profit TEA party is not capitalism.
Jetting around the world to exotic places to save the earth is not capitalism.
Nothing Obama’s government does and very little from the republicans is capitalism.
They all ignore our Dead US Constitution.
oebele bruinsma:
It is not about left or right, it is about to control or not to control. As has been said over and over again follow the money.
Agreed. And both Democrats and Republicans will support a new carbon trading model because it makes the oligarchs rich and the tax can be passed along to average people.
gbaikie:
But if a government nationalize the car industry and sells cars to customers, does that
make it capitalism? . . . So capitalism is offering stuff that people want, socialism is forcing people to buy
stuff from something government controls and that government outlaw any other kind alternative way to get it.
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of the definition of socialism. Yes, if the government nationalizes an industry and sells cars to customers that is socialism, by definition. The socialist “solution” to AGW would be to nationalize carbon industries like power generation and the automobile industry and to direct the companies to lower carbon output. The capitalist solution is what has been proposed in America, force change by creating a new property right and trading exchange and allow the “free market” (one of the stupidest phrases ever) to set the price of carbon emissions.
Your distinction about socialism “forcing” behavior and capitalism allowing behavior is a common but incorrect distinction. Both socialist and capitalist economies (and mixed economies like the U.S.) “force” or steer consumers into buying certain things and preventing them from buying other things, etc. For instance, capitalist countries have intellectual property laws that grant monopolies to certain companies and prevent others from selling protected products. Capitalist countries are just as adept at forcing their citizens to do things (the U.S. leads the world in imprisoning its own citizens for instance).
David A:
Governmental legislation to enrich a few is socialistic, through and through.
Huh? Isn’t it the opposite of that? The workers or the people own the business enterprises so the profits and benefits of the enterprise are shared by more of the people. It’s capitalism that gives the vast majority of the winnings to the few people at the top
Capitalism was simply honest to admit the monetary motivation in human nature . . . .
That is religious dogma (akin to pushers of CAGW) that has little basis in fact. Sure, people are motivated by money, but the idea of the “rational utility maximizer” and other theories about the efficiency of the markets is a bunch of hogwash that even capitalist economists are now realizing were exaggerated. These religious beliefs are used to justify many of our bad capitalist economic policies (like carbon trading).
mikerestin:
Raising taxes and introducing a carbon trading scheme is not capitalistic.
It’s crony socialism.
Solandra was not capitalism.
Wind turbines are not capitialism.
Solar panel fields are not capitalism.
Obamacare was not capitalism.
Taking over GM was not capitalism.
Running guns to Mexico is not capitalism.
Ignoring our southern border is not capitalism.
Discrimination against the non-profit TEA party is not capitalism.
Jetting around the world to exotic places to save the earth is not capitalism.
See above about why these things you mention are 100% capitalism. As explained above, carbon trading is THE capitalistic solution to AGW. Socialism would be nationalizing industries and changing emissions that way. Solandra was indeed captilalism as was the “take over” of GM, for the same reason. The government did not take these firms over instead it gave gifts to the owners of these firms. 100% capitalism. Obamacare is indeed the capitalist form of health care administration . . . it uses private insurance. Socialism is what they have in many countries like GB and what we have here with the VA. Even single payer, something many on the left want here in America, is a capitalist solution (although by far the best capitalist solution of them all).
Running guns, solar panels, and wind turbines are neither capitalism or socialism. It’s just silly to claim these are “socialist.” The word has no meaning if you just use to as a pejorative for things you don’t like. Might as well say “poopy” instead of “socialist” because that is more technically accurate. Same thing for immigration policies and discrimation against TEA party people or jetting around the world to exotic place. That has nothing to the way businesses are organized (socialist v. capitalist).
GPHanner:
There is nothing liberal about American Liberals; they are fast closing in on Fascism. But then, the International Left has been there for almost 50 years, Of course, they had a head start in that race.
American liberals may be fascist, I’ll give you that. But they are no more fascist than American conservatives. Both Democrat and Republican parties are equally supportive of policies attacking civil rights and both equally support constant wars overseas and meddling in other countries affairs. There are a good number of people from both parties and many independents (like me) that support civil liberties and an end to global intervention.
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of the definition of socialism and capitalism.
[quote=]The capitalist solution is what has been proposed in America, force change by creating a new property right and trading exchange and allow the “free market” (one of the stupidest phrases ever) to set the price of carbon emissions. [/quote] Nothing capitalists about creating a government trading exchanging and forcing people to use it. A trading exchange created by private people with no government regs would be capitalist… such trading exchanges currently exist or did until they went bankrupt as no one wanted to play.
[quote=]Your distinction about socialism “forcing” behavior and capitalism allowing behavior is a common but incorrect distinction. Both socialist and capitalist economies (and mixed economies like the U.S.) “force” or steer consumers into buying certain things and preventing them from buying other things, etc. For instance, capitalist countries have intellectual property laws that grant monopolies to certain companies and prevent others from selling protected products. Capitalist countries are just as adept at forcing their citizens to do things (the U.S. leads the world in imprisoning its own citizens for instance).[/quote]
You are confusing fascism aka socialism dressed as capitalism. This is a typical mistake made by people who have no idea what socialism or capitalism is. In a true capitalist market you can’t have things like copyright laws or anything else along that line.
[quote=]Huh? Isn’t it the opposite of that? The workers or the people own the business enterprises so the profits and benefits of the enterprise are shared by more of the people. It’s capitalism that gives the vast majority of the winnings to the few people at the top[/quote] Socialism stated goal is to make everyone “equal” this is not possible. The real world socialist goal is to make the vast majority “equal” and create and super elite and rich ruling class. You didn’t see stalin, mao or any other socialist/commie working fields, starving, etc, etc, etc.
The rest of your post is much the same ignorance you completely confuse socialism with capitalism and claim clearly is socialism. The problem you seem hooked on it that its not communism which is typical for people who have no idea what they are talking about. Just because something is not communism does not mean its not socialism. A simple rule for you to understand the difference between communism and capitalists is a commie wants the government to do everywhere where a pure capitalist wants the government to stop existing. In turn a socialism wants the government to do more/most things way a capitalist wants the government to do less/very little.
You also seem to be hooked up on the movement of things. Socialists who want to enslave the world can’t in say the US simply pass a law enslaving everyone. They would be shot dead in the street in a matter of days. So they must slowly grab power pushing ever steadily to communism. The claim that the government mandated carbon exchanges is capitalist is stupid. It is clearly a socialist push for more socialism that won’t result in that whole nasty being shot in the face while walking down the street. You would be completely current in saying its not the commie fix for the problem but it is the commie fix for the problem that they can push through.
temp: to do quotes such as
use the HTML tags. Use the less than symbol followed by the word blockquote followed by the greater than symbol, then your quoted text, then a closing tag, which is the same as the open tag but with a / in front of the word blockquote.
Mark
–You have a fundamental misunderstanding of the definition of socialism. Yes, if the government nationalizes an industry and sells cars to customers that is socialism, by definition. —
correct.
–The socialist “solution” to AGW would be to nationalize carbon industries like power generation and the automobile industry and to direct the companies to lower carbon output. —
Yes that would be what socialist do.
But btw, if want to lower carbon emission, all that’s need is stop having the governmental barriers for construction nuclear power plants [and less significant also storage of nuclear waste]. And main barrier is governmental delays of construction- there no reason US or European business can’t make a nuclear plant faster than China, but if only the same time period would an be a large improvement. Nuclear Energy has been the safest and cleanest energy compared to any other power source- particularly if you think the environment wacko have some merit to their numerous and endless whining about hydro dams.
What also can done is governmental research in development of needed technology and laws regarding extracting natural gas from vast methane Hydrate deposits in the ocean {Japan and US is doing this, but pretty low key operation}. Natural gas is mainly needed if want to do anything to lower carbon emissions from transportation uses [you can’t have nuclear cars [though cargo ships could be different issue] and electrical car are not a good bet at this point in time] but then again transportation is not particularly important if your goal is to make most reduction in carbon emission.
Also in regard to nuclear energy we need strengthen the Nuclear proliferation treaty, and an important part of agreement is the agreement to assist countries who wish to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and these countries who get assistance have given up the right to make nuclear weapons as part of this agreement.
Personally don’t think lower CO2 emission is important as CO2 greens the deserts of the world and increases crop production. But just saying assuming one did think this was important, then one should take these obvious steps, rather than what is the focus- which essentially fraud and/or idiocy and of course is completely ineffective- destroying the environment and rather than reduction it’s causing more CO2 emissions.
—The capitalist solution is what has been proposed in America, force change by creating a new property right and trading exchange and allow the “free market” (one of the stupidest phrases ever) to set the price of carbon emissions. —
A new property right is also pretty stupid phrase also. Any property right can be sold- assuming anyone wants to sell or buy it. But what is actually meant is the government seizing of a property right. And as normal we expected to pretend government giving something when what the government is doing is stealing.
Or it’s what socialism does.
–Your distinction about socialism “forcing” behavior and capitalism allowing behavior is a common but incorrect distinction.–
The government is only entity with the legitimate use force, this what is meant.
Or if non-government entities attempted to do what government routinely do, they would be violating laws.
Citizens of course have the right to defend themselves and their property but they don’t have legal power over the action of others or their property.
Whereas Governments can tax you, they can make all kinds of stupid rules and laws one has to follow, they can detain you, and etc.
Throughout history and continuing to today the main social problem is has been the oppression by governments. This is particularly acute problem for about half of the world’s population
“Both socialist and capitalist economies (and mixed economies like the U.S.) “force” or steer consumers into buying certain things and preventing them from buying other things, etc. ”
Yes, there is things called the freedom of the press and speech- there are regarded as natural and inalienable human rights.
But there no obligation by other citizens to provide whatever products or services you might decide you want. If you are willing to make and/or sell something, it can only be the government which can possibly have the legal power to stop you.
–For instance, capitalist countries have intellectual property laws that grant monopolies to certain companies and prevent others from selling protected products. Capitalist countries are just as adept at forcing their citizens to do things (the U.S. leads the world in imprisoning its own citizens for instance).–
Some of the government oppression I was referring to.
All such laws were passed with best intentions of law makers. But government is as they say, a necessary evil.
Of course I do want to protect the artist property- but it’s evolved into little to do with this- a big business and not a useful one. And don’t think current law is helping artists and inventors. And don’t think it was ever a very good law, and times change and laws
have changed. I think in comparison it makes the post office look good
Basically I have about same view towards such a laws to do with national security secrets- and that is they should all have shorter expiration dates. That the song, Happy Birthday is copyrighted just a sign of how bad it is.
temp:
In a true capitalist market you can’t have things like copyright laws or anything else along that line.
Where do you get this odd notion? Do you have a source for your odd definition of capitalism (whether “true” or not? I suspect you are confusing capitalism with anarchism. That’s fine if people espouse anarchism–just don’t equate it with capitalism. Capitalism uses the state (that dreaded “statism”) to enforce property rights. It also organizes the economy so that those that have capital hold the power. Where do you get your idea that capitalism=no government enforcement of property rights?
I understand the cult of capitalism has created a dogmatic belief in the power of “free markets” . . . so this is why so many people mistake “true” capitalism with no government (a.k.a. anarchism). But the notion of a “free market” is beyond naive–there is no such thing as a “free” market. Humans create all markets and simply setting up a market and enforcing some rights over others means certain people will be favored over others. Since capitalism sets up property rules and enforces them it is not truly laissez faire or “free market.”
The problem you seem hooked on it that its not communism . . .
Unsurprisingly, you made an erroneous assumption about me. I am not a proponent of Communism as a modern solution. Even though certain communities, like the community Jesus was a part of and obviously believed in, the Essenes, made communism work.
Socialists who want to enslave the world can’t in say the US simply pass a law enslaving everyone. They would be shot dead in the street in a matter of days. So they must slowly grab power pushing ever steadily to communism.
There you go again, conflating socialism with communism. There are many different shades of socialism, and most Western economies are mixed economies meaning there are some socialist components, like the U.S. military which is a government run operation.
Also, capitalism is just as likely, if not more so, to enslave people than socialism is. Trade in African slaves was a “free market” capitalist enterprise. And capitalism, as promoted by the huge propaganda machine the MSM, is about encouraging us plebes to accept our enslavement . . . it tricks us into thinking we are not enslaved. The modern slave gets a 401K and gets to “choose” what health care plan he has. Someone on this thread or another thread posted an excellent quote by Aldous Huxley to this effect.
The claim that the government mandated carbon exchanges is capitalist is stupid. It is clearly a socialist push for more socialism . . . .
You couldn’t be more wrong. Read up on the Coase Theorem and all the other Chicago school economists who argue it is a capitalist scheme. Read up on how the very capitalists who run our government and our economy (i.e. the big banks) are set to make billions. Look how large “conservative” businesses like GE and even Republicans realize the rich will profit off this scheme. The carbon trading scheme creates a new form of property where carbon credits are traded on the “free market” (there’s that religious dogma again). Again, socialism is technically government control of enterprises so socialism would be to nationalize carbon producing industries. Taxing products and letting financiers profit off these taxes is pure capitalism. In the case of the carbon credit regime government is not even keeping all the taxes! Its allowing private financiers to put most of the taxes into their pockets! Now that’s capitalism! You may object and claim that is “crony” capitalism but then you would be fooling yourself that there is actually a distinction between the two. Capitalism exists to enrich those who control all the wealth already and the carbon credit regime is going to do just that.
Mark T
Classic mistakes all around. I use the scientific definition of socialism(pure socialism aka communism) which is “where the government owns and controls the means of production”. This has been around for a good 100+ years as the accepted scientific definition and accepted by socialists the most, so I even go so far as to use the definition as defined from the pro-socialist side what socialism is.
Capitalism is always shown as the polar opposite of pure socialism aka communism. The problem is that socialists have produced huge sums of propaganda to confuse the simple minded on what its definition is… so instead of using the somewhat complex to the simple minded definition of capitalism i use the simple scientific definition which is “Where the government owns or controls none of the means of production”.
Your next classic mistake is anarchy is a type of government not a type of economy. Governments however must be paired with a matching type of economy. The reason why you seem to see my definition as anarchy is because pure capitalism’s government type IS anarchy. Pure capitalism can not exist except when paired with a government that is anarchic. Just as pure socialism can not exist without total government control aka some form of complete totalitarianism/authoritarianism. Things like anarchic-socialism can not exist in science for the definition of such a thing would read roughly “The government that can not exist, owns and controls the means of production”. In simpler terns its basically saying “God does not exist, but god controls everything”. It is not possible in science to claim on one hand something doesn’t exist but then say that said non-existing thing controls everything.
Your confusing capitalism as it moves toward socialism vs pure capitalism much the same way you confuse non-pure socialism with capitalism. You yourself even admit that capitalism is an economic type by saying that capitalism uses “statism” a form of government to reach its goals.Thus see above as you even agreeing with my argument. If the government only enforced property rights I would agree that said government would be very close to pure capitalism… however its important to note that the enforcement of property right via the government is an act of socialism and that it why it moves toward socialism on the socialist vs capitalist scale. Generally however when you start dealing with copyrights, IP rights, and stack upon stack of other things you drift very far on the scale away from capitalism and are much closer to an the “center” of the scale.
Its also a matter of how enforcement goes. The more the government is involved aka more laws, more courts, more bureaucrats, more government. The more socialist that enforcement is. A commie in fact argues for extreme property rights… they just argue that the government should have those complete rights. The difference between socialism and capitalism is how much the government owns and/or controls not the topic of that ownership or control, because fundamentally anyone can argument virtually any topic that causes the government either to stop existing or become complete and total in control and ownership.
You confuse two points… while I completely agree with you the concept as you define free markets doesn’t exist, that is not the concept used. Free markets has always meant free from government control… the idea that free markets means “free from controls and completely fair and blah blah blah” is nothing more then commie/socialist propaganda slant.
bah fail on my part
if it worked so well why did it not work. I do agree that communism can work under some conditions… plato and many others have worked hard on those conditions… they of coursed were stopped or failed.
No confusion we have many socialist and many outright commies in the US government… in fact my quote is a direct statement to that affect… which you then agree with 3 lines down from here.
agreed… which is exactly what I said in the quote that you quoted… which you disagreed with.
Not sure you understand what the US military is… if you say pointed to a euro army that is drafted I would agree that that is a very socialist army. The US military is a mercenary army at least currently anyway. It also has alot of restrictions on what it can do in control. Both of these result in a much more “capitalist” version of a military.
While I agree that you can have slavery in capitalism you MUST have slavery for socialism.
Not sure what pro-capitalist media your talking about because about the only pro-capitalist media I know of ever existing was right after the US revolutionary war.
The goal of fascism and many other forms of socialism is to trick the people who are slaves into believing they are free… aka to make them believe they are not living in socialism and in fact are living in same type of capitalism. I completely agree with that.
First I deal in science just because a bunch of fools are claiming something doesn’t make it true… schools have claimed lots of things are true and most have been proven wrong.
Once again you confuse capitalism with socialism. Socialism is where the government seizes or creates a way to take money from sum to give to another. What your talking about is classic socialism in every way. If the government didn’t step in then these people would not make any money.
Correct
You were doing so well then you hit the fail again.
Crony capitalism in from the economic school scale. In economics every act is considered capitalism. The economic school scale uses state controlled capitalism on the left and free market capitalism on the right. State controlled capitalism is equal to communism. Crony capitalism is next to state controlled capitalism and is often called fascism in sociology aka crony capitalism is a form of socialism.
“American liberals may be fascist, I’ll give you that. But they are no more fascist than American conservatives.”
You need to brush up on your definition of Fascism. Fascism is the political philosophy of the government running and owning everything. You may have learned in school that the Nazis were a Right-wing movement; if so, thank a teacher for that. Think again: NAZI is an acronym for National Socialist Workers Party. American conservatives want less government, not more.
@mikerestin, no matter how “nice” RL”fun”G tries to dismantle your statement he actually describes socialism a “T”, why? Because true capitalists gamble their own money or the money of those willing to gamble with them as well on their own ventures (stocks etc). But his rebuttal shows only those that are only willing to “gamble” as in “TAKE OPM” through taxation, regulation and restrictions etc. without using a penny of their own! And that makes me ill!
GPHanner:
In the previous thread I acknowledged most liberals and progressives are ignorant of the “leftist” aspects of National Socialist Germany. However, as we are seeing with the confusion regarding basic concepts such as socialism and fascism, I think terms like left and right can also be confusing and not help the discussion. The National Socialists were conservative in some ways and liberal in others. But they were definitely socialists.
I don’t agree with your definition of fascism:
Fascism is the political philosophy of the government running and owning everything.
National socialists differed from (and hated) the Bolshevik Communisits. National socialists allowed for stratification within the classes (some people made more money than others) and they did not want to pit one class against the other as was seen in many other Communist and International Socialist revolutions before. They allowed private property and some private enterprise. So your claim is false.
Like the other ‘isms’ we have been victims of propaganda and don’t have a clear understanding of fascism let alone national socialism. I probably shouldn’t have used the term “fascism” in the same way as the person I was responding to was using it but the meaning I meant is more the modern meaning of curtailing individual liberty.
Thats pure socialism aka communism not fascism. Fascism is where the government owns everything and but only actively controls maybe 70-90% of everything, so it can pretend doesn’t own and control everything and then selectively enforces when it does. The goal of fascism is to pretend its capitalism while being socialism. Fascist propaganda has been so successful that many stupid people even today think that fascism is some type of capitalism instead of very clearly socialism.
All socialists hate other socialists because they believe they are not real socialists. They only work together when they have no choice in the matter.
All socialists movements do this… stalin, mao, etc, etc, etc they didn’t walk to work…. they had 30 car prides to it.
Really? So that whole holocaust thing didn’t happen huh?
They only allowed private property or enterprise when they felt like it…. once again have you never heard of this thing we call the holocaust?
Your the one who seems to lack an understanding what what fascism is… first you don’t even understand that fascism is a form of socialism. Second you probably have no clue who invented fascism or what fascism was based on. Third The goal of all forms of socialism is to curtail freedom. Less freedom=more socialism/more freedom=less socialism.
The carbon trading “market” was not voluntary and did not self-organize. Government mandates != capitalism. Invoking a capitalist economic theory in this context is like claiming the Affordable Care Act saving everyone $2500 a year in medical costs.
How is the government rationing of emissions permits (exchange traded or otherwise) even remotely a capitalist solution?
A bunch of economists also said that printing money was the way to prosperity, do you believe them too?
There is nothing liberal about American Liberals; they are fast closing in on Fascism. But then, the International Left has been there for almost 50 years, Of course, they had a head start in that race.
Because every half hour of broadcast requires six to eight minutes of advertising, The anchors and pundits need to fill 22 minutes with talk. Sensational or faux conflict/outrage is easiest to conjure up on the fly when you have nothing else to say and you have to fill those minutes. No 22 minutes? No job.
I’d be very happy with only 8 minutes of ads per half hour. When I am killing time watching tv, I immediately change the channel, when the program switches to an ad. I have something less than 1,000 channels to watch (I don’t need HD on a 26 inch tv). When I switch to a new channel, the current program is listed for a few seconds, at the bottom. But the current program is virtually never showing at the time, or I can’t tell, because the title is often meaningless.
So I keep switching until some program is actually on, and I don’t stop on foreign language programs. My thumb highly prefers the UP direction. So I never return to a program, aborted by an ad.
Talk radio is even worse. A three hour program, will have about a half hour of news or talk, and then they recycle that for the rest of the three hours, except for the endless, and often totally inane ads. I’m quite certain, that I have never bought any product or service advertised on a radio program, and often schlepped by the radio host. Why would I want to hear about somebody’s flea bitten mongrel, that got cured by a particular whizzbang product.
I’d be quite happy to listen / watch 10 minutes of continuous advertising, as a prelude to a half hour uninterrupted program. Even our one and only Area wide classical music station, will stop and advertise in between movements of a Brahms symphony, and their almost sole announcer would rather waste time yacking about some completely unknown, and deservedly so composer from the 16th century, than actually play some interesting music. They have the world’s largest collection of obscure music by unknown composers,; most of it thoroughly deserving all of the obscurity it can muster, and then some. It was junk when it was written, and it is still junk today. That pattern persists even today, and through all genres. Doesn’t matter whether it is rock, jazz, blues C&W whatever. The good shines above the rubbish.
So it isn’t just science or politics where the media fails to serve the public well.
Dr. Ball’s essay is quite timely, and these churls need to have their noses rubbed in the junk they purvey.
Commercials are, unfortunately, how the station stays on the air – no commercials, no station. I just mute the ads and go off to the kitchen for a libation. If I’m watching one of the cable channels, with 3-4 minute commercial breaks, I can usually do something useful.
Surely you have an NPR station, and a PBS station – no ads.
Sorry to hear about your classical station – ours (KUSC) doesn’t do much talking, except for the twice yearly pledge fortnights. I have to agree about the deservedly obscure composers. KUSC generally plays the more well-known composers, with the odd less-well-known ones for its educational value.
Newly retired engineer: I would rather view the ads than go to the chuff on PBS.
I have 2 channels and so am blissfully TV ignorant for last quarter century that I have lived here. Thank God I found this weblog. Maybe not for blood pressure, but helps my sanity. . .
I have a PVR. I record what I want to see and watch it when I want, fast forwarding through the ads.
..exactly. I am surprised if this has not hurt advertising revenue. I do not watch commercials.
George – I was struck by your choice of the possibility of a commercial in the middle of a Brahms symphony. I agree that is insensitive if not outright boorish. But your comments about a station playing “unfamiliar” music does not resonate with me at all. What’s wrong with something new? Even less-played works of Brahms. Still they shy away from just about anything written in the last 100 years. The thought of a commercial between movements of a Brahms symphony kind of strikes me as a pleasant change – relief from wall-to-wall-warhorses! (Only when they play recordings of live-recorded concerts do we sometimes hear anything “modern”.) Mostly – music so familiar it doesn’t distract you! Elevated elevator music? Good training for doing something else while NOT listening.
Sorry, too good an opportunity to miss. Brahms…
When watching the news programs in the morning after half an hour you can switch off as you know there will be the same again and again and again till the whole sorry affair is over at 09.00 or 10.00 and if there is a breaking news story they repeat the same report calling it an update and the studio guys are talking it round and round in almost total ignorance and you have reporters “at the scene” questioning people who cannot answer anything but the most basic of questions because they don’t know or cannot say. I end up shouting at the screen let them do their job and let the camera do it’s I don’t need to hear you voice as much as you do.
Rant over normal service will be resumed when we know what normal is!
James Bull
They aren’t called truisms for no reason.
Nothing but the facts, Dr. Ball is right on as usual.
Many thanks for your hard work.
Over here in England, Monbiot is seen as a ‘twat’. When the cooling in temps (since 2001) become as long as the warming trend from 1980, he will suffer along with the others who have done their duty to the Left, and been ‘had’ by the governments and the ruling classes that he despises. It’s all very amusing. Back in 2003 I was active on climate change forums here. I made a regular point of telling the greenies that they would blindly let nuclear power in through the back door. And they did.
I( wouldn’t use the course language but Monbiot is certainly a knowing liar.
On a recent article at the Guardian he complained that Hurricane Sandy wasn’t persuading us poor deluded sceptics of the reality of CO2’s murderous intent.
I pointed out that the IPCC AR5 reports low confidence in predictions of hurricanes and no trend in North American hurricanes in the 20th century.
When pointed out that the was scaring people with no mainstream scientific justification he… did nothing.
Monbiot told a lie. And when it was shown to be wrong he did nothing to correct it.
Monbiot was not mistaken. He is a willing liar.
I think, gentlemen, he meant to type TWIT
“Monbiot told a lie. And when it was shown to be wrong he did nothing to correct it. Monbiot was not mistaken. He is a willing liar.”
And therein lies only part of the problem: the acolytes who will say anything in support of their “cause”. We witnessed the another part in the post from Dr.s Edwards & Betts, in a guilty, knee jerk reaction to Dr. Ball’s previous post.
Yes, guilty, or at least, so it appears to me. As Dr. Ball pointed out in yet an earlier post, AGW breathed new life into many an academic career. I have to believe that nearly all of those who used AGW in order to sell an idea for a grant are aware that they have sinned. They either allowed their personal belief in the importance of their research to justify the means, i. e., claiming a link with AGW when they knew well there was none, or only the most tangential, tortured-logic, tenuous relationship, that were it not a hot-button topic, a claim of relationship with their own field would, in a more rational atmosphere, be reason to REJECT the proposal; or they knowingly used the subject (AGW) in order to preserve their income. As Dr. Ball pointed out, many of these folks have family to feed, but that does not make what they’ve done right. And I’m sure that many a conscience stings over putting expediency over honesty. Oh, they can rationalize it and say they put FAMILY first, but if a person who has been laid off (made redundant, for my Cousins) steals to feed their family, instead of looking for new employment and taking a menia
job or two delivering pizzas, do we let them get away with it, because they have children to feed?
We do not.
But it gets worse: these people have now been co-opted by the people with an agenda. in order to rationalize their acts, they must support AGW, or at least, be seen to do so. I know a guy who was a member of a labor union that was out on strike. times were very tough. To feed his family, he traveled to another city, where he “crossed the line”, i. e., he was a scab. A traitor to hit union brethren.
But since the transgression was in a different city, with a different, non-shop company, who knows, right? But if word of that got out, even now, years and years later, do you think this lad would be able to keep his good standing?
But he is still very pro-union, to hear him speak. But everyone has their price, eh?
Many academic supporters of AGW are probably rationalizing guilt at having profitted by using a device they knew well was not legitimate.
That an act is not unlawful does not make it moral.
What is happening in places now, is that people are finding it easier to distance themselves from AGW support without being labeled an apostate, because even the media aren’t quite as shrilly certain in their headlines as once they were, thanks to the now undeniable ”pause”.
Sure, the Moonbats— ‘scuse, Monbiots of the world will come roaring right back with the slightest encouragement. Assuming there is any sign of warming\extreme weather upon which to hang their cries of doom (” sperstorm” Sandy, anyone?).
But the truth is, no matter what the real situation is, manmade or not, a great many have taken the opportunity to profit from it in days that were not honest, and they well know it, and that drives a great deal of the issue in academia.
None dare call it conspiracy because it isn’t… Just thousands of people saying to themselves, “Well, if everyone else does it, why not me?”
No.
I will not suggest the ‘C’ word . . . .
That word – not necessarily applicable -might be –
Griff. Or not.
Auto
Another case of two countries separated by a common language. It (tw*t) doesn’t have the
same meaning in British English as in American English. There are a lot of
“Americanisms” though that can get you in hot water in the UK (actually, some
hot water would be nice now – it’s freeeeeeeezing….).
In Germany there’s a brand of readymade pie crust that’s probably illegal in England
(Aunt Fa**y)….
UK Prime Minister David Cameron on a breakfast radio show talking about Twitter:
Not that bad a word here in the UK.
‘Moonbat’ is an unapologetic green propagandist to whom the description ‘watermelon’ is, in my mind, well deserved and entirely appropriate.
Mercenary: working or acting merely for money or other reward; venal. A hireling.
Having been directly affected by Sandy living on a peninsula I was changed but not to an alarmist in the CO2 sense…Living through the devastation, being homeless, loss of property and livelihood knowing it was just a random freak event like what the weather has and can do. I was reminded just how powerful mama nature can be and unforgiving…It still chokes me up just to think about it all, but what is worse is having a sibling who insists it’s all global warmings fault aka our evil CO2, warning me to abandon not to rebuild, not to invest but flee because of the ever rising tide of blah blah…Its’ people like this Monbiot who influence those like my sibling (a complete eco-nut lefty btw)…The claim the high ground, insisting their college phd told them the earth is dying and it’s all our fault all the while living like kings. For the record I am an CAGW skeptic…sry if I took this off an a rant and off topic a bit, had to get this off chest!
MrBungled
November 30, 2014 at 8:08 am
The devastation caused by Sandy owes to New York State’s obeisance to the Green religion. It lacked storm surge protection because of pseud-environmentalist concerns over the effect of such structures on the ecology of the bay. No problems have arisen in Rhode Island despite Providence’s barrier in place since the ’60s.
How dare you compare Monbiot with a ‘twat’ !!
I have derived great pleasure from the latter & none from the former.
Yes, I can’t argue with that.
That one made me laugh!
Two ways to pronounce the “a” in twat.
As in “cat” or “what”. The cat style is much less offensive. I won’t go into the vernacular for a cat otherwise you silly lads will be off again.
Oh, go on Farmer, you know you want to. Is it true that you take sheep to a clifftop because they push back?
Thats a New Zealand thing!
The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley says: “When the cooling in temps (since 2001) become as long as the warming trend from 1980, he will suffer along with the others who have done their duty to the Left”
More likely they will become the Millerites of the scientific community (after the world failed to end in 1844); changing their group name, revising their doctrine, and ignoring key elements of what just happened.
Let us suggest the new group name. Mine is the Flounders. Why… Well why not!
Every-day Alarmists
Over here in England, Monbiot is seen as a ‘twat’.
==========
does this mean Monbiot is a vagina?
Monbiot is yesterday’s climate eco-warrior. Didn’t even get a single nomination in this year’s Pratties. How the mighty have fallen.
Pointman
Unfortunately, for most people the ends do justify the means, We live in didactic times where we are told constantly what is good for us and what we ought to do. Look at how natural, healthy foods such as eggs, milk and meat have been demonized. It is no different with respect to the climate. In fact, this is the greatest ‘noble cause’ of all time — the planet must be saved! Well, if the very existence of the planet is at stake, then we must take sides, err on the side of caution and if a few rules get bent along the way, where’s the harm?
Consciousness seeks the lowest level. It takes time and effort to understand climate science. When there is a concerted effort by governments and international agencies to make it appear there is a broad consensus, then it is difficult for anyone to challenge it. It is just so much easier to go along with the consensus.
Still, skepticism is winning. Survey after survey show that most people do not believe in CAGW and have all sorts of questions about even AGW. Why? I would argue that ultimately common sense prevails. If predictions keep failing, not even the most sophisticated propaganda will work. In a few more years, as temperatures continue to drop, it will be impossible to argue that CO2 is anything but an extremely weak GHG.
‘Still, skepticism is winning. Survey after survey show that most people do not believe in CAGW and have all sorts of questions about even AGW.’ -Alan Poirier
Is it? Until you win over younger generations, you will find yourself winning only a battle but losing the war.
My son is in high school and most of his friends and classmates don’t agree with CAGW. On their papers that they hand in I try to get them to ask pertinent questions but they just laugh and say “I want to pass and get good marks so what if I fudge the numbers. This is climate science and that is standard isn’t it?”.
We both have a good laugh about these things. You would be impressed by the level of outright cynicism that a lot of youth bring to “climate science”. They’ve been forced to watch “An Inconvenient Truth” once too often and are now convinced it is propaganda.
That may be precisely the point. In the recent American elections, some of the young did indeed turn out to vote. But they didn’t vote quite the way they were expected to. Many of these young people are new to the workforce. You may have noticed a demographic trend of tweens – even thirties – still living with their parents. Reality, experience, is a powerful teacher. And the parents whose domiciles they should have vacated long ago are providing instruction on what has gone wrong. The left’s stranglehold on the youth vote is loosening, and they don’t even know it. Yet.
I am with TRM here. Most young people I talk to think AGW is just a poor bit of social engineering at best.
Actually the old chestnut about the link between saturated fat and heart disease is a very good parallel for the AGW scam. It would be interesting to see if FATGATE would have survived as long with the internet as a means to disseminate information.
Actually it’s now de rigueur to refer to it as “Fataquiddick”.
A tidbit – during WWII, troops needed foods that would have a shelf life so Northern Europe left marginal land and used milk fats (saturated, but natural). Largest recorded reduction in heart disease for the natural fats folks!
I really hate to say it but I don’t think that the global warming gravy train will turn around until a very large number of people are cold and hungry. If you are just one paycheck away from the sheriff you are gonna be hurtin.
It’s ok if groups they don’t like fall through the cracks & over the edge.
But if their nice allies in their nice Eco-Blue lifestyles end up in a bad pinch, then Ferguson and L.A. Riots will be nothing.
And the Media will be handing them bricks.
Alan, if we had followed the folks that demonized foods in the last 20 or so years, we’d all be eating sand! ( after it having been washed with distilled water of course).
There are two kinds of progressives: activist progressives and default progressives. The substantial majority are default progressives who are usually oblivious to the real agenda of the activists. They believe what they believe because it is all they have been taught; it is all they hear in the filtered news media that is all they read; and virtually everyone they know believes the same things, for the same reasons.
CAGW is a tactical policy for the activists, but an article of faith for the default progressives. It is not a conspiracy, it is a part of a political movement.
But for all progressives, lying is just a matter of tactics. Progressives preach “multi-culturalism” and the rejection of the Judeo-Christian ethic. The ethic which includes a moral rejection of “the ends justify the means” in general, and of lying in particular. It is no surprise then that you find progressive activists expressly advocating lying (Steve Schneider and Jonathan Gruber being only two recent examples). And it should also therefore be no surprise that default progressivesdefend it when their progressive leaders engage in it.
At this point I just use the term “progressive” and “communist” interchangeably. Interestingly, back when I was a little kid in the 50’s, I really thought the term “liar” and “communist” were interchangeable. (It was only years later I realized that some liars are not necessarily communist…)
Thank you for your honesty. Unfortunately, this sloppy thinking is prevalent among far too many skeptics and it weakens your point because you are grossly mistaken and you don’t care that you’re wrong. You even seem to know your conflation of communist and progressive is wrong but you do it anyway. Isn’t this exactly what people complain about with Gruber? That he is intentionally lying to people to achieve his goals?
RLFG you are absolutely correct.
Not all liars are communist/socialist/liberal/progressive.
But all communists/socialists/liberals/progressives are liars and thieves.
The list is too long to post here but, I’ll name a few for you.
Obama, Pelosi, Gruber, Gleick, Schnider, Strong, Gore, Clinton, Bush, McCain, Rubio, Frank, Dodds, Mann, Jones, Boxer, Sharpton, Jackson (Jesse and Lisa), Christy, Crist, the entire Congressional Black Caucus, the entire IPCC, the entire UN, and the list goes on and on.
They all push the lie for their own cause.
mikerestin,
You demonstrate how you are a victim of divide and conquer partisan politics. Of course not all liberals or progressives (by which you seem to mean Democrats) are liars. Just like not all conservatives are liars. The people pushing AGW want exactly this partisan divide and you are obliging.
Remember, there are many liberals who agree with you on global warming or are willing to hear both sides so it does not good to label them stupid or liars, etc.
Also, you didn’t even respond to what I wrote you just wrote a non sequitor about your hatred for half of your fellow Americans and how they are “liars,” it had nothing to do with what I wrote.
Stalin called the default progressives “useful idiots”.
In tracing how the Press came to share power alongside Government (without the inconvenience of submitting to the ballot), Dr. Ball explains the thinking behind press-protections in the First Amendment:
“Freedom of the press” would not be nearly so impressive, if it was shoehorned into the 7th or 9th Amendment. Do you know offhand what the 7th & 9th are? The order of the Bill of Rights (first 10 Amendments) matters. First things first.
The First Thing, is Religion. Shoehorned between it and Assembly-Petition, is Speech-Press. And Speech isn’t even the Press’ ‘own’ guarantee, but belongs to all.
That’s some fairly rich irony (as things have turned out politically), that Press is not only placed in direct contact with one of its very favorite diss-objects – ewww – Religion, but is secondary to it in priority. Ouch.
Fond Media & Allies hopes were, in decade past, that Religion would decline to the point where it could be scrubbed. But though church-pews are lonely places these day, Americans continue to back God, Salvation and the Christian Estate, to the hilt.
Unless you’re a radical Islamist.
Actually, the idea that newspapers have special mentioning in constitution is wrong. The word “Press” in First Amendment meant exactly that – printing press. All it said that you have not only a freedom to speak you mind, you also have a freedom to publish</b it.
Udar;
Yes, quite so. “; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;“. Two different things.
Culture around the presses was very lively; Romanticism had flamed-on, only in the previous few years … and press-communities were consumed by it.
Did Benjamin Franklin call himself a “pamphleteer”, to distinguish between the several kinds of press-technologies & markets?
Ted
mikerestin;
That is some phenomenal mental gymnastics, alright!
Ted
GaryM,
They all lie. The carbon scare is done for ulterior motives.
The ‘justice & equality’ they say they want are J&E on their terms — which makes it injustce and inequality.
Dr Ball or readers.
Can I suggest you publish a typical anthropogenic global warming (AGW) grant application, that the rent seeking crowd usually apply for. I think this would be helpful.
That would be helpful 😉 My wife is struggling to get grant funding for her research and I have suggested to her that she weave in something to do with potential cagw to help progress her chances.
Reminds me of an article by a Soviet physicist that I read many years ago. He had to include include the obligatory reference to “dialectical materialism” or some such.
From my own experience she would do well to include women’s rights and how to progress them too. The combination of AGW and women’s rights in grant applications is unbeatable. Almost every application form for project or research funding from the UK government asks what the project/research will do to mitigate climate change and advance the position of women in society.
Keep on at ’em, Dr Tim! Where is your tip bowl?
Check out Dr. Ball’s site. http://drtimball.com/
There is a donate tab.
On his home page
http://drtimball.com/donate/
There are a lot of people sweating on the return of a new little ice age. Those who have deliberately misled the world over cagw know that they will have a lot to answer for.
Yes, but who will they answer to, and what will be the price?
I suggest nobody and nada.
They’re not sweating on anything. Many of the guys who were wrong about the “population bomb” and the 1970s (or was it ’80s) “coming of the ice age” are still around, still with their snouts in the trough.
F’rinstance, a year ago Paul Erlich did a six-city speaking tour of New Zealand. Not sure what his theme was but I’ve an idea it was AGW. I learned about the tour from the NZ Skeptics, whose regular emails I receive. When I inquired whether we were being advised of the tour so we could attend and call the fraud out or whether the Skeptics were on the guy’s side, I received a non-commital answer. So much for the Skeptics’ scepticism.
Now, I realise a six-city tour of New Zealand is small beer indeed but Erlich was probably tacking the Shaky Isles on to an Aussie tour.
In any case, this fella was proved to be as wrong in his specialised field as the oldtime turnips who reckoned the Sun went around the Earth were in theirs . . . yet he’s barefacedly carrying on as though he once made a minor mistake with his arithmetic.
Graph’ a six-city tour in NZ is all the main population centres 🙂 It’s a big deal.
They will not have to answer to anyone. It will still be the hottest year in the hottest decade ever until elephants evolve into mammoths.
Can you imagine the additional demand for heating fuel and electricity when that happens?
I’m not sure I am willing to tar the entire mainstream media with the same brush. I think the issue there is the same with many in the political class: they simply don’t understand science or technical issues. How many times have we heard one of them say, “I’m leaving this to the experts, and I’ll do what they advise”?
Their entire experience is based upon results of a vote. A politician wins an election, a jury and/or judge reach a majority decision, 97% of scientists agree, democracy triumphs! Woo-hoo! Unfortunately they cannot grasp the idea that science is not a democracy. It’s not in their DNA. Any ideas outside of their (favoured) majority are tainted somehow and not worthy of consideration.
Paul I think you are correct in not tarring all of MSM with the same brush. In most cases they are simply lazy.
This is the genius behind what Maurice Strong has achieved. He understands bureaucracies, particularly their need to grow and/or survive.
No grand conspiracy is required, simply put in the work up front and create the sponsoring bureaucracy with funding to create programs. Other bureaucracies will latch on and defend their turf and funding. Self-deception is easy when funding is at stake. The sheer weight of the created behemoth is enough to convince the MSM that the message is credible.
“Lazy” is a default rationale. Most modern media writers are willfully ignorant, surprisingly under-educated, and ideologically corrupt before they even begin their careers. Journalism schools amplify the conformal bias. The journalist of today was yesterday’s copywriter – a paid hack whose job it was to fill print space according to the edicts of the copy editor. As before, today’s copywriters can be well paid if they can produce quality purple prose that copy editors can hang a audience-drawing title on. Most liberal arts programs and, I would insinuate, most undergrad science curricula fail at teaching students critical analysis and interrogation skills.
The visual media works effectively the same way. Actual factual content is even less important there since there is now an enhanced range of senses to play to, and we prioritize A/V content over intellectual content when we’re watching short media clips. Hence, it’s relatively easy to pass on your bias. Conveying truth is a lot more work because its so messy figuring it out.
Alan, that milk meat and eggs were bad for us is also junk science. It turns out all along that it was sugar that was the cause of obesity diabetes heart problems etc etc. The new demon is alcohol, anyone here in the UK who enjoys a glass or two of wine at night is a “borderline alcoholic”!
Just out of interest, today in Newcastle it has been dull, cloudy with no wind, the temperature now at 18:30 is 10 Celsius, it has changed by less than one degree since 9:00 this morning, when it was 9.1. Common sense tells me that CO2 is not the culprit and that solar panels and wind farms will have contributed nothing to the National Grid today.
It is the tyranny of experts in all fields. I recall the efforts to demonize coffee. Now it is sugar and CO2. The experts need causes to advance their goals. It is always a case of particular interests being advanced in the guise of general interests.
Check out this $3 book, “Strip the Experts”:
http://www.amazon.com/Strip-Experts-Anarchist-Discussion-Martin/dp/0900384638/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1417305907&sr=1-1
How do you differentiate the person who is expert by experience? During any revolution that has happened against ‘tyranny’ everyone loosely associated with what the populist view of a tyrant is are disposed of. There is no effort what so ever to distinguish between those that are truly expert and experienced and those that have unearned superiority and so legions of good and valuable people have met an unjust end.
Maybe it’s because that those with true knowledge and experience are a threat to the new tyrants?
However, I take your point that there are those that do their best to ring fence their knowledge by playing the superior card or worse still, because they feel self righteous. We all know the last is worse because there is no possibility of countenancing their views because the righteous knowledge is placed in the ‘circle of the righteous’ and any criticism is automatically outside and non-righteous. It has only been 500 years since the start of the Age of Enlightenment and the subsequent Industrial (and Scientific) Revolution. Considering the age of humanity this is an incredible short and astounding transformation. The best is that in industrial countries the individual has the possibility to make their own future and even change that of others (consider Bell, Watt, Whittle, Harrison etc.) and importantly the ability to escape superstitions, myths and ignorance. Sadly, I feel at the group level we are no better than 500 years ago and we respond easily to the new myths and prejudices to the point of enjoyment and even encouragement. Consider the disappointing variety of conspiracy theories that abound that also look awfully like group paranoia. So while Dr Tim Bell has eloquently pointed out those in the press that fall short of what we expect in terms of journalism I don’t think it’s good when we respond to the Climate Change hysteria by demonising whole professions or groups.
I’m not pointing this at you, but just sharing.
the Merck Manual lists under-eating and over-eating as both leading to death. Maybe it isn’t what we eat, but how much?
Having said that, it is possible that some foods falsely stimulate the appetite through interfering with chemical signals evolved from a time before we had industrial food production. Other foods may be missing micro-nutrients due to industrial farming techniques. Which again could leave one hungry even after a large meal. The body would continue to signal you to eat more, as it strives to make up some missing nutrient.
Or the food could simply be addictive. As a food manufacturer, surely addictive food would be the gold standard in product development. The holy grail. Aren’t there more than a few people with food addictions? I used to notice that drinking soda pop left me more thirsty than before I drank it, so I quit drinking pop. I notice many girls these days are addicted to lip gloss. Once they start using it they can’t stop, otherwise their lips will dry out and crack. Great if you are selling lip gloss.
On experts and how people believe in all kinds of things.
See here.
US war dead revealed that heart disease in the US did not take off until after WWII and before the Korean War. The minimum age of military service in the US was 18, which means we are looking for something that changed between 1934 and 1952.
The US population did not increase its consumption of saturated fats during this time period, so saturated fats cannot be the cause of heart disease.
The smoking gun:
“The depression of the 1930s, followed by the rationing of World War II, led to a reduction in supply of animal fat; and, by 1945, “original” margarine almost completely disappeared from the market.[14] In the US, problems with supply, coupled with changes in legislation, caused manufacturers to switch almost completely to vegetable oils and fats (oleomargarine) by 1950 and the industry was ready for an era of product development.[14]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarine
“Medical authorities began framing saturated fats as unhealthy in the 1950s. In the 1980s, activist organizations, including the Center for Science in the Public Interest, condemned food corporations’ use of saturated fats and endorsed trans fats as an acceptable alternative. Nearly all targeted corporations responded by replacing saturated fats with trans fats, which fit easily into their existing products. Trans fats thus became the perfect solution to the political problem of saturated fats and to the technical problem of what to use in their place. Activists helped precipitate technological change, but by 1994, trans fats were no longer regarded as a solution. Instead, they became regarded as a new nutritional problem.”
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/technology_and_culture/v053/53.1.schleifer.html
Center for Science in the Public Interest
Highlights from 40 Years of Accomplishments
1989 CSPI campaign spurs major hamburger chains to stop cooking french fries in beef fat.
1994 CSPI calls on the FDA to require the labeling of cholesterol-raising trans fats in foods and leads the effort to require lower-fat school meals.
2003 After a ten-year CSPI-led drive, the FDA finalizes a rule requiring food manufacturers to list artery-clogging trans fats on Nutrition Facts labels.
http://www.cspinet.org/about/accomplishments.html
questions:
1. did the CSPI campaign against animal fat cause the shift to trans fats?
2. did the CSPI campaign against trans fat result from CSPI’s campaign against animal fat?
How reasonable is it to expect that animal fat is the cause of heart disease, when animals have had billions of years of evolutionary pressure eating each other?
One might just as well argue that it the artificial fattening of beef cattle on grain feeding lots that is leading to heart disease. Grain fed cattle has white fat, while range feed cattle has yellow fat.
Yellow fat turns white when range fed cattle are moved to feed lots, and the animals typically double in weight..Perhaps this explains why people put on low fat (high grain) diets become fatter, while people on high (low grain) fat diets become slimmer.
Perhaps the problem lies in the the use of white fat in preference to yellow fat, or in the substitution of animal fats with grain?
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29616418
“It’s very clear that cattle that are fed on pasture have very, very different fatty acid patterns from cattle that are corn-fed. So I think how the animal has been reared probably has a big impact in its nutrient profile and, presumably, on health outcomes, which may be why there’s such conflicting evidence, because it depends on where the source of your food comes from.”
In the US, where most cattle are corn-fed, there is good evidence that higher rates of red meat consumption are associated with higher rates of heart disease. In Europe, where cattle are more commonly raised on grass, the association seems much less clear.
Although eating some types of fat may not be as damaging as we once thought, surely fat is bad for you because it makes you fat? Not necessarily.
A recent study, this time published in the Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care, “High dairy fat intake related to less central obesity”, certainly questioned the link.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29616418
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23320900
ferdberple,
Here is some more background on fatty foods. It just goes to show you how wrong consensus can be. You can’t fail to see the parallels with CAGW in the Wall Street piece deeper in the original article
Maybe having to go through over 200 comments sitting at my desk on just one topic may, just may add a few molecules of fat to my system, but then reading some of them burns them off in a hurry!
Rule 1: Never talk to journalists, they ALL distort, misrepresent and misunderstand, and that’s just the ones without a political agenda.
I learned that the hard way! They’ll never allow the truth to get in the way of selling newspapers. If you pour your heart out about an issue, expose your true sincerity about it along with the facts and hard evidence, they’ll drop the facts and hard evidence from the story, pay little or attention to “the issue” itself and make it all about you as being some sort of a “zealot”.
I have never seen a news story about something that I had some inside knowledge of that they (news media) didn’t twist or foul up somehow. Makes me wonder how much is done with the stories I don’t or can not verify.
Jim +1 – exactly my experience
This is why the internet is such a savior. I can check stuff for myself on Google Scholar etc. to see if what the media is telling me is really as they tell it. Often I find it just ain’t so or is exaggerated.
Mike, my name is Peter Crawford. In an interview with the local media it came out as “Bryce Fleming”.
In a ‘past life’ I was interviewed at length about the Windsor Castle fire by media from around the globe. I was at the time chairman of the environment committee on the County Council and also the councillor who represented that part of the county. I had been at the castle and heavily involved from shortly after the fire was discovered until it was finally under control in the early hours of the following morning.
Later, when the report on the causes of the fire by our county fire service was ready for release it was highly critical of the government department responsible for the upkeep of the castle and laid the blame on penny-pinching which had stopped the installation of up to date warning and fire-suppression systems. Things our fire service had called for over many years but which had fallen on deaf ears in government.
The government received advance copies and then we, as Councillors and as a Council, were threatened with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act if we released the report without prior government sanction. There was a general election coming up 3 months down the line …..
I was an independent, rather than a member of any political party as it meant I could always speak my mind rather than being forced to speak to a politicised agenda; I was never very receptive to being told what I must say and being instructed and threatened about release of the report left me no other option…
So I went ahead and released the report very late in the afternoon that we were threatened; it was a matter of fact and neither I nor any other councillor had ever signed the official secrets act.
That evening I had the novel experience of a senior reporter from one of Britain’s oldest and most respected daily papers sitting in my kitchen drinking wine (copious amounts!) while they held the front page for the story as, in fits and starts, he dictated it over the phone.
That was a good and accurate story – but the following morning I was interviewed over the phone by a reporter from another of the major British dailies. That lasted about an hour and a half and the following day produced a two page spread in the paper.
I had recorded the interview myself but the article bore no resemblance at all to the interview, what I had said or even the fire service report. Not one single ‘quote’ attributed to me was anything I had said. In short the article was written to put the message out that that particular newspaper and journalist wanted their readers to understand and that was to remove any heat or blame for the Windsor Castle fire from the government of the day.
It was the first time I had come across politicised reporting where facts are discarded to generate the political message that a particular journal or journalist support. But it is commonplace and seems to have become ever more so in recent years.
The thing which amused me about all of this was that in a couple of live national tv interviews I had called on the government minister then responsible to resign. Instead of being prosecuted, as had been threatened, I received a very nice card from the minister written in his own hand saying that although ‘all is fair in love, war and the run up to an election ‘ he felt I was being a ‘little unfair’ in calling for his resignation..
There has been a lost of discussion here about lazy environmental journalists, and that may be true. Personally I subscribe to the view that in the UK journalists like Monbiot of the Guardian and Lean of the Telegraph know perfectly well what they are doing and to my mind that is acting as propagandists for the Eco-activists and the AGW agenda.
Great story, thanks.
I am guessing it could be reporter used you to get facts, then asked questions of authorities using your facts, and making the reporter seem quite well informed. And then the reporter could do a huge the favor to the authorities by printing their story [or just make up lies for them] to gain favor with the authorities.
It’s part of the reporters business to get access to authorities and they can further their career considerably by increasing their access.
So giving them good information is just handing them something they can trade for favors.
And they keep the goods for some future use- or say authorities don’t give them the access
they wanted or whatever [some might even call that blackmail].
pimps and prostitutes
The brain-dead Monbiot and the never brain-alive Lean.
They do it for the money.
Old England thanks for that illuminating but unfortunately very familiar story. Which were the papers involved?
Thank you for a well-written article.
A watchdog watches the flock. A lead dog watches the trail. We need more lead dogs working proactively than watchdogs regurgitating the past. The solution to continued CAGW carnage is not to sit around singing the songs of our people in this way but to identify the constraints that prevent reversing the harmful CAGW policies and overcome them.
Eliyahu M. Goldratt (Theory of Constraints, 1984) wrote something that should be stunningly obvious – success is prevented by a few constraints and that by identifying and removing them, success becomes more probable. I suggest one such constraint to remove is to stop putting energy and resources into dwelling on the past and begin working on the future. The skeptical effort to date has been an archeological dig while the CAGW effort has been empire building. It is time to come up from the tunnels.
unfortunately, stories about the climate not changing, nothing to worry about, these are not news. you cannot get anyone to write about good news.
however, if you can show that there was skullduggery afoot, that folks lied and cheated to get where they are, and that in the process they stole from you and I. Well that is news and someone somewhere is likely to publish.
so, CAGW continues to build scary stories about the Bogey Man coming to get us, and the skeptical crowd continues to dig up stories about skullduggery.
I’m not sure I am willing to tar the entire mainstream media with the same brush.
I certainly am. In my youth, newspapers and their reporters were genuinely honest and hard working investigators. I know of none in our current batch of journals. In France it is even worse than the UK. There is absolutely no talk of the “otherside” anywhere. Not in Senate or Deputés, not on the gavernmant news channels, not on the privately owned channels. Nowhere !!
Stephen do you guys still have that Maginot Line ? If you do just hide behind it. Global warming won’t get around that.
Oops I think I mistakenly thought Stephen is from France. I don’t dislike the French , I just wanted to to remind everyone of a very similar situation in that large sums of government money were wasted by building defenses that made people feel good but didn’t work. They made a lot of jobs though. Patton said that fixed fortifications are monuments to the stupidity of man. Ours will be the windmills.
Love your comment about the (non) legacy of today’s “windmills” (although being Dutch I do see the ones that work and have for centuries and in other countries as well) , it’s the application not the hype.
Asybot. The strange thing is that I really like windmills. I been planning to build one of my own for about thirty years. Now that I have the property, time and money I have lost interest and strength. If I win the lottery I am going to Holland to see your beautiful country and those old windmills.
Ya, I don’t have the property, time, and money for worthless wind turbines either.
http://fenbeagleblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/hanging-up-by-the-constables.jpg
Here is Monbiot after the CRU email leak / hack whatever. This should have reminded him why he entered journalism. This should remind him why CAGW sceptics exist.
That Guardian page is from the Wayback machine since it has been removed from the Guardian website.
You can still get it here too.
https://archive.today/uPDGz
Well, he was right, unfortunately so were they. They pretended, and arranged a few “investigations” while the press turned away. When the “exonerations” were issued, the press had successfully ignored the very damaging stuff and could report, “nothing to see here”. This simply would not work if the press reported the contents in the first place. At this point, five years on, has anyone seen coverage in newspaper, AP, NYT, network, of the “very damaging” stuff in these emails? Pretending worked, sorry to say.
A tenet from the book “Flat Earth News”: media is desperately loooking for material to publish. This is why the publish (almost) everything that lobbies provide to them.
Conclusion. We shoud start to send our own PR material to the media.
You don’t believe they’d ever publish it, do you?
They get plenty from the skeptics and just ignore it.
So it goes that lie detector results are “not admissible in court” but … would it be out of line to at least challenge witnesses for Congressional climate hearings with the question, “Are you willing to take a lie detector test about your faith in your own testimony before your present it at the hearing with the understanding that, should you agree to take it, the results will be publicized and, should you not agree to take it, your refusal will be publicized? YOUR CHOICE!”
We can’t expect to put the fear of God in some of these people but it seems that the fear of a lie detector could be a useful tool pointed in the same direction.
The availability of info has allowed people to only live in the world they agree with. Here in the Northwestern U.S. you couldn’t hear a counter perspective on a bet. Political correctness rules with an iron fist reality denying is more common than a northwest rain. There exist no counterfactuals enough to change a mind. Global warming wise it’s hook line and sinker all the way. If this place were buried in ice tomorrow it would be due to warming, the rich, Halliburton, George Bush, Monsanto, and any other corporation you could think of. It’s embedded, systemic, ain’t goin nowhere.
Approximately 10% of the media will admit voting for Republicans.
.
The media are a strongly left-wing biased group..
Leftists want more government and hate corporations.
.
One way to reduce the perceived power of large corporations
is to raise taxes on them.
.
One way to raise taxes on them would be to tax their energy use
and claim this tax is ‘to save the Earth’.
.
For people to believe the Earth is in danger,
the media must keep publishing stories about the
projected harm global warming will do..
Since there has been no warming in 12 to 18 years,
and the measured warming since 1979
has been mainly in the northern half
of the Northern Hemisphere,
mainly at night … in the winter …
very few people on Earth can honestly
say they have noticed any warming.
.
The “global warming crisis” is nearly invisible,
and mainly off in the future, so there is ONLY one way
to convince the public it exists: Make up data, such
as “97% of scientists agree”, and keep publishing
articles with scary (made up) projections of the
environmental damage future global warming will do.
.
And of course the “solution” is to tax corporations for their
energy use, propagandized as “carbon pollution”,
and give the new tax revenues to the central governments.
.
The result is bigger, more powerful central governments,
and less profitable corporations, all being done to
“save the Earth” … but the money and power
is what the “warmunists” wanted all along — a fantasy crisis
is their political tool to get it.
.
A coming global warming catastrophe (that will never come)
is nothing more than a political tool to gain power
and control the masses.
.
It is not even necessary for a climate catastrophe to actually happen —
we don’t even need any measured warming — all that is needed
is for the masses to BELIEVE a crisis is coming,
and then the imaginary crisis can be used to gain power.
.
The leftist-biased media support the fantasy of a coming global warming
catastrophe because they are mainly leftists, of course, but also because
scary stories attract readers/viewers.
.
Journalism schools, most pointedly Columbia’s, have been churning out good llittle leftists for a couple of generations now. Most journalism majors, when asked why journalism for a career choice, say they “want to make a difference”. Not report the news, make a difference, and the only way that happens is if you interject yourself into the narrative.
Remember too…with progressives/leftists results are secondary to intentions. As long as your intentions are right, you’re never judged on yoyr results. See Paul Ehrlich.
Peter Gleick most likely stole, lied and falsified documents therefore, as a communist/socialist/liberal/progressive academic in charge of ethics he got a promotion.
That’s how they work.
Nudge – nudge – nudge is how they slowly and eventually push their lies.
How does one compromise between the right to bear arms and eliminate all guns?
Just lie and nudge a little at a time until you get your way.
A big mistake of many is the belief that corporations pay taxes. They don’t, they use the price of their product to cover the expense of taxation. It’s the buyer who pays the taxes, just in a hidden way.
A similar process as tax withholding in US paychecks, the worker hardly ever looks at the pay stub values and sees how much tax withheld, only the amount deposited, if they don’t have direct deposit.
Both are Progressive ideals, just as is the progressive income tax rates.
Rakman your point about the consumer actually paying the tax is right on. Worse than that the tax raises the costs of US corporations relative to international competition affecting job creation and wealth creation in the US. I live in Canada and I cannot believe the stupidity of the high corporate taxes in the US, but it is good for us.
Left wing politicians up here muse about the good old days when they could get the “man” to pay, but even they realize what is happening. It’s just that they cannot miss the opportunity to sell the pipedream that they can get someone else to pay for the benefits.
That is why most don’t care when the tax money is wasted. They don’t realize that it came from them hidden in the cost of everything they buy.
That’s why I like the idea of the “Fair Tax.”
http://www.fairtax.org
If the government wants to collect taxes let them get the money to run the government with a 23% tax on consumption of resources.
Let Rush and Gates and Streisand pay 23% on the purchase, operation maintenance of their mansions and SUVs.
Eliminate all other federal taxes, fees and imposts.
Eliminate the political pay offs and using the feds to kill your competition.
Lots of good things are possible if you eliminate the direct tax on working hard and prosperity.
We better move quickly…the government is rapidly pushing towards 24%.
80% of the US economy is in the top 500 companies. Have these companies collect a sales tax, and eliminate all other taxes. this would allow small business to compete with big, and eliminate the massive costs and inefficiency of tax legislation and enforcement.
The amount of revenue to the government would remain the same. The major difference is that the government would no longer know how much each individual earns.
If corporations did not pay taxes, as you imply,
then why do many large multi-national corporations
report / divert so much of their net income to tax havens?
See recent investigations of Apple’s taxes, for one example.
According to your beliefs, the use of tax havens would make so sense,
since the corporations could just pass on ALL their tax expenses to their customers.
.
It is true that total withholding taxes are all part of the cost of hiring a person,
so each employee is really paying twice the withholding taxes
he sees deducted from his or her paycheck.
.
The primary tool to expand government spending is the use of deficit spending.
.
Money is spent now, but taxpayers don’t feel the pain of higher taxes hitting them now
(their children will inherit the debt in the future,
but not many people think about the future …
… except for the coming climate catastrophe, of course!!!).
.
Since people can get government benefits for the cost of a tiny amount of interest
on the borrowed money each year — the use of deficit spending encourages
more government spending than people would accept if all the costs
were funded by taxes on them.
.
The media is not “leftist” in any sense. The Democrats and the media are solidly capitalist. This is why they support capitalist “solutions” to AGW like carbon credits. The Democrats and Republicans agree on all the major issues. They might bicker on whether some tax rate should be 20% or 30% but that doesn’t make one a free market capitalist and the other a socialist.
Both parties and the most of the MSM solidly support our capitalist system. It’s the oligarchs at the top that run all four estates.
Capitalism is based on products freely chosen.
Statist policy is based on Governmental authority dictating taxation, be it in the form of revenue forced from corporations, individuals etc, when it is required by government authority it is Statist. That Statist Governments seek monetary profit, is neither surprising, or capitalism.
But capitalist economies are statist just like socialist economies are statist. Capitalism simply uses statism to favor the capitalists (i.e. owners) whereas socialism uses statism to favor average people.
Why do capitalist societies grant monopolies in the form of intellectual property? Capitalist countries use the government to enforce property rights, correct? Capitalist countries like the U.S. put more people in jail than any other country on earth.
If you don’t like government you should call yourself an anarchist rather than a capitalist. Or at least an anarcho-capitalist.
There is nothing in ANY socialist country ever that has “favored the average person” .. Ever.
Now, in their books, in their speeches, in their propaganda? Yes, most certainly. In their university classes and tea-rooms and lectures and poetry sessions? Oh most certainly yes. For the socialist leaders? The police state is most definitely the chosen path.
But in real life? Never. Socialism has always failed in everything but suppressing freedom, thought, religion, and economies. It does only one thing well: Killing average people. Harming average people.
I doubt that you honestly believe there is any form of justice with Cap & Trade.
When they use the government to make multi-billionaires out of their multi-millionaire friends in Washington, Chicago and Wall Street that are helping by pushing Cap & Trade. $Ts to be made.
Nor do I believe you have thought through a policy that increases energy costs because everybody knows that life without cheap energy is brutal and short.
1. Everybody knows they’re lying for The Cause.
2. Everybody knows the IPCC has its own mission.
3. Everybody knows the money will be given to the corrupt UN.
4. Everybody knows the UN props up tyrants and despots.
Please give us your upside to keeping billions of our fellow human beings in energy poverty.
Also, please explain to us The CO2 Temperature Thermostat Control Knob Theory and your thoughts on the proper temperature of the earth.
I say you’ve got nothing.
RLFG says:
American liberals may be fascist, I’ll give you that. But they are no more fascist than American conservatives.
Couldn’t be more wrong. For one thing, you are equating consevative with a political party. That is wrong. And conservatives are anything but ‘fascist’. You don’t seem to understand your labels.
In general a conservative is one who wants the original Constitution and Bill of Rights followed. To the extent we have strayed from that, we’ve gotten into trouble.
The same thing goes for your misunderstanding of ‘capitalist economies’. There are none. But to the extent that an economy approaches pure capitalism [a Karl Marx label that I do not like], that economy becomes wealthier, and the average citizen prospers the most.
Likewise, you are mistaken about the TEA Party [which I don’t belong to, because I don’t belong to any Party].
RLFG:
Wow, what utter nonsense. Do you actually understand what the word statist means? If you want people to listen to you and take your responses seriously, educate yourself on what you are discussing.
Mark
mikerestin:
I agree with you about Cap n Trade. It is a huge transfer of wealth. I bet I share your skepticism of CAGW as well as the “solution” to this “problem.”
Mart T.
How am I misunderstanding the term statism?
Isn’t creating a monopoly by granting a corporation or person a right in intellectual property and then enforcing that right (and even throwing people in jail) a form of statism? Isn’t our government throwing people who save seeds or download movies into jail? Doesn’t the government grant corporations the right to do business and require them to register? Don’t the courts enforce corporate property rights and allow them to sue other people for violating contracts?
It is not capitalist.
Not really statist, nor capitalist.
It is not capitalist.
The courts do not “enforce” property rights, they protect them. It is the necessary requirement of capitalism to have a government strong enough to protect the rights of its people. It is not statist, not in the least.
Your problem with the term statist is that you do not understand what it actually entails. Statism is putting the needs of the state before the needs of the people. You seem to be under the delusion that because the US is supposedly capitalist, then all of these things (some of which are statist, some of which are simply unjust) must also be part of capitalism. You do not understand where that line is drawn, for whatever reason.
Capitalism is the free market. None of the things you have pinned on capitalism as failures are actually failures of capitalism. They are some form of statism (or simply draconian law), be they socialism, fascism, communism, etc. It does not matter which, none of them are a result of capitalism.
Your knowledge of communism is also somewhat lacking. Communism IS socialism, but the reverse is not always true, sort of like all squares are rectangles. The biggest difference is that communists lie to their people when they say they will ultimately reach some sort of utopian society that does not require the totalitarian government in place at the time. Socialism offers no such guarantee, rather, it is quite clear that some form of totalitarian government will always be required. The latter is a truth as long as humans possess free will.
Mark
Do you really believe this? What nonsense! Haven’t you ever watched MSNBC? Do you think they distorted the news like this 50 years ago? So there has been no long march through the institutions? no take-over of foundations by left wingers? Is Obama just a black Eisenhower?
Capitalists accommodate, which makes it easy for people like you to pass your fantasies off as facts. But the driving force during the last 20-30 years has come from the Left.
rw:
Do you think they distorted the news like this 50 years ago?
Yes.
So there has been no long march through the institutions? no take-over of foundations by left wingers? Is Obama just a black Eisenhower?
In fact, Obama is like a black Eisenhower. Both inherited a huge war machine and both expanded while pretending like they object to it (Obama has started more wars that W Bush).
The “left” has been destroyed and co-opted. Many conservatives scream aSocialist at modern Democrats who are very similar to Nixon or Ford or even Eisenhower. Both parties have moved to the “right” over the last 30 years. It’s conservatives, libertarians, and TEA party folks that have been duped into thinking the left has taken over.
But really, it’s not about left/right. That’s a false distinction. The people that really run our government, the oligarchs, use partisan bickering to divide and conquer.
Both parties have supported imprisoning the most people on earth and massively curtailing our civil liberties. Both parties (with Clinton and the Democrats leading) supported a “free market” solution to things like banking and allowing banks to create a shadow banking sector. Both parties advocate stealing Social Security. Both parties have advocated a form of Obamacare (and the Republicans got to vote against it but secretly support it). Both parties have advocated shipping Ameircan jobs overseas. Both parties have supported endless wars overseas as well as neocolonial policies overseas. Most people would consider the above policies “conservative” policies.
Mark T,
Thanks for admitting that you do support statist policies. You want to use the state to support your favored winners and punish the people you don’t like (which is funny because you hypocritically accuse socialists of picking a favored few as winners). So I understand the term statist just fine. You seem to have a problem with understanding that capitalism is therefore ipso facto a “statist” form of government. Cap and trade fits entirely within the statist capitalist system–and in typical fashion it makes a few bankers insanely rich while making average people pay a tax on all the energy they use.
Also Mark, your semantic argument that courts don’t “enforce” property rights is unconvincing. They most certainly do and if you were to peruse legal/political science writing they would commonly use that term (search google scholar as an exercise). Courts enforce contract and property rights all the time. If you don’t pay a bank for your credit card they sue you and use the power of the state to collect their money from you. That’s enforcing their contract rights. Monsanto does the same thing if you grow one of their patented seeds without permission.
RACookPE1978,
Socialist societies have done very well in health care. They have created far more efficient health care systems that have much better results than the U.S. mostly for-profit system has created.
Socialist systems have done very well by nationalizing say the oil industry and other for profit enterprises (and the states and Indian tribes have done similar things as well). And socialist systems have created effective companies, for instance, Volkswagen. Socialist systems have also done well building roads and railroads and even the USSR (which I do not consider Socialist but more of a tyrannical communism–which was oddly funded by capitalists–but that’s another story) even did very well in science and military matters. For instance, how did the USSR win the race into space at one point if such systems “always” fail?
So one should be very careful to use absolutes like ‘never’ and ‘always.’
dbstealey,
It’s funny because I think “real” socialist societies are very rare and that you also think the same about capitalist societies. But “real” capitalism is not free market by definition . . . because as I already pointed out and have yet to see refuted, capitalist societies rig markets as well but do it in favor of the already wealthy. Most people arguing here just like the outcome of capitalist societies better (not that they personally win the same way the few oligarchs at the top win but the MSM has convinced them they are winners are about to be winners).
No I don’t. I did not even hint at this. This is the first lie.
No, that is not true, either. It is an outright lie, as a matter of fact.
Where did say this? Yet another lie from you.
Not one thing you have mentioned – except protecting property rights, is part of capitalism. Period. You are at best an ignoramus, at worst, an outright liar.
Not if it is forced by the government. If individuals/corporations/[insert any non-governmental thing here] want to trade carbon credits themselves, that is their business. It is statist, and not capitalist, otherwise.
Stop lying and I may reply to future posts from you. Four in one post, probably more if I look at the rest of your nonsense.
Mark
RLFG says:
…I think “real” socialist societies are very rare…
The reason is quite obvious: they run out of other peoples’ money.
Next, you split hairs over the definition of ‘capitalism’. I told you that is a Karl Marx word and I don’t like it. So let’s cut to the chase, and just use ‘the free market’. ‘K? thx.
Next, people try to rig markets. It is part of human nature, but so is being a thief. We should curtail bad tendencies. As a great champion of free markets wrote in the 1700’s:
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
He was defending the free market, which is not a conspiracy. So don’t impute faults like yours to the free market, which is a goal to be attained — while Socialism is a threat to be avoided.
Next, the constant examples demonizing those who have been successful through their own hard work is typical of socialists/communists, who only demonize them in order to try and take their place — without the hard work ethic or skill necessary.
Finally:
Fen’s Law:
The Left believes none of the things they lecture the rest of us about.
True dat.
Mark,
I did not lie. I will not get dragged down to your level and accuse you of lying or being an ignoramus. I will try one more time to point out that you indeed support statism when you claim:
nothing except protecting property rights, is part of capitalism. Period.
You do realize that exception is so big that it swallows up the rule it claims to be an exception too, no? In your exception you agree the state should have its courts protect private property, including locking people up. How is a court locking people up not statism? How are courts enforcing intellectual property rights not part of “protecting property rights”? A good portion of the time courts spend on cases involve companies suing over contracts or for violations of their “property rights” or to collect debt. That is the “statism” that you approve of. I’m sorry that your philosophy so heavily depends on meaningless buzzwords like “statism” and “free markets” that when shown the internal inconsistencies of these buzzwords you can’t accept the truth.
You also write about Cap and Trade:
IIf individuals/corporations/[insert any non-governmental thing here] want to trade carbon credits themselves, that is their business. It is statist, and not capitalist, otherwise.
Why would a company voluntarily trade carbon emissions? The “cap” part is the government setting the regulation and that’s why the companies trade. I don’t blame big banks or companies like GE getting in on the action to make money . . . that’s what they do. But the system is set up to enrich these banks and the already rich–like GE. The rest of us will pay more in the products.
The one “lie” you accuse me of that I admit I might have been mistaken about is claiming you wrote that socialists simply enrich a few of their friends. It may have been someone else that wrote that. This format makes it difficult to toggle up and down on these threads so I’m sorry I got that wrong.
dbstealey:
The reason is quite obvious: they run out of other peoples’ money.
Another common misconception about socialism (and capitalism as well). This is actually my pet peeve.
Neither socialism or capitalism needs to borrow “other peoples’ money” or even to tax in order to spend. In fact, the 1932 U.S. Congress adopted a bill, the Goldsborough Bill, to do away with this system and adopt a ‘Social Credit’ system. See here http://www.michaeljournal.org/plenty50.htm
The government simply need to print debt-free money for its expenditures (except to limit extreme wealth or to discourage certain behaviors like consumption of alcohol and drugs). The Continental Congress engaged in this type of monetary policy, Ben Franklin was a proponent, as did Lincoln when he printed Greenbacks (the real Treasury Greenbacks which are debt free–not the Fed. Reserve greenbacks). Someone else on one of these threads at WUWT posted that the Confederacy issued debt free currency. These currency issues were a huge political deal in the 19th Century and now most Americans have been propagandized into forgetting this history. National Socialist countries in Europe got out of the Great Depression printing debt free money as did Japan.
Our money is our collective birthright. We should all share in its prosperity. The concept that some people are “stealing” money from the “productive” is a bunch of claptrap meant to make willing slaves of the people that fall for that garbage. We should be distributing the people’s money per capita every year to the tune of something like $25,000 a head. No taxes except for import taxes and taxes to limit the top 5% or so from hoarding all the money.
so not only do you believe in socialism, you also believe in Modern [Monetary] Theory economics as well? It is very generous describing that as a theory, you can drive a truck through the flaws in it.
guess what, that has already been tried – in Weimar Germany, no less.
Money is a medium of exchange. It does not create economic growth. Printing money inflates prices, it does not grow an economy. The issuing of Greenbacks was a temporary measure and their value halved by the end of the war – this is what happens to an unbacked fiat currency that is printed from thin air. The more you print, the less the value as faith in the currency is lost. Printing is only ever a small-scale solution, as we will find out when the current monetary experiment draws to its inevitable conclusion (again, Weimar, Yugoslavia, Zimbabwe amongst others all show the inevitable result of devaluation through printing).
Your comment that socialism favours the average person is so far wide of the mark it’s not even funny. Have you lived in a socialist state? Socialism is wonderful at creating strong governments and little else. In those small countries where socialism has the appearance of working, it is because the taxation revenues are boosted from exports and other economic activity that are far greater than the productivity of the population (ie usually small countries that either have natural resources to exploit, or have created for themselves a ‘hub’ economy that draws in external revenue through favourable tax and business laws – capitalist devices). This is why countries like Norway appear prosperous despite socialist tendencies, while larger socialist leaning countries like France are basketcases. The USSR provided the ultimate example, economic “growth” was derived from the additional productivity gained from forcefully moving workers off farms and into factories but the military and space races bankrupted the nation (for want of a better term). If they could have simply printed their way out of it you can bet they would have. They couldnt.
Socialism on a large scale does not work because all spending programs need to be funded through savings generated by production, or through debt which is paid for by future production. To claim anything else is to believe in unicorns.
That, Richard, is the wonderful versatility of Global Warming. There is no need for some cross spectral conspiracy at all. The politicians like it because it brings power and control, some businessmen like it because it brings wealth, the media likes it because it is controversial and so sells eyes, some scientists like it because it brings grant funding, the left likes it because it bashes corporations in general and big oil/coal in particular, the environmentalists like it because they can use it to make things cleaner and generate donations and the bed-wetters love it because they just know we will destroy the world if we don’t stop consuming.
Global Warming ® is wonderful for so many and it doesn’t even need to be true. In fact because the effects are so slow and so nuanced they don’t even have to be happening at all to be scary, just the possibility is enough to advance all of the various agenda. We, on the other hand, are just boring because we want to take the big Global Warming stick out of their hands and burn it in a power station so as to keep the lights on.
No wonder they hate us. We are just those grown ups spoiling their party by telling the truth. Let’s hope they tire before we do because all of their destructive agendas will bring great suffering to us all if they aren’t stopped.
What’s missing from Tim Ball’s analysis is the power of belief, Most adherents of climate catastrophism do not believe it because they have anything to gain by that, but because they sincerely believe it. Since they believe in catastrophism, just as sincerely as Tim Ball believes in climate skepticism, they are not going to be made more amenable to considering that they might be mistaken by attacks on their motives. Thus, this kind of argument, which essentially says that people who hold different opinions than ours are evil, adds to the sound and the fury but does not enlighten.
The power of belief is much greater than the power of economic and political interest. Humans are believing animals first and foremost. They tend to fall in love with some system of beliefs, attach themselves to it, and identify with it. We also see this phenomenon in climate catastrophism, and, equally, climate skepticism. The clash of belief systems tends to be productive when it focuses on the differences in beliefs, unproductive when it focuses on denigrating the motives of the opposing side. The psychological question of what influences led this or that individual adherent of a belief system to become an adherent is no doubt an interesting one, but it has no bearing on the truth or falsehood of that system. People who attack the motives of their theoretical opponents suppose that they are attacking the enemy, while in reality they are attacking their own side.
Read Tim Ball’s excellent piece again, and try engaging your brain this time.
It’s actually the power of fear that is the strongest tool goverments have. It is currently used widely. Here in Britain, in 2003, the British government thought it prudent to put light tanks at Heathrow Airport during a ‘terror alert’. It was nothing less than puerile. What its purpose was, was fear – not to any terrorist who might, or might not, have been up to some plot, but the public. It served absolutely no other purpose than public fear. A year later, the BBC ran a TV series called, The Power Of Nightmares – The Rise Of The Politics Of Fear. Good tv.
What does that say to those of us — myself, and I know I’ve read several folks here on wuwt say the same of themselves — who changed our minds?
Belief is powerful — but it does not act alone. We don’t believe X just to be believing in something. The psychological influences are of more than academic interest.
It’s not ‘missing’; its off-topic. Not that belief isn’t interesting, but that it’s a different Post.
This post is about the complicity of (some, important) Media in the ‘dirty tricks’ of Climategate; the email dump from CRU, East Anglia.
To write a good post, means focusing on “a” topic, and unavoidable, “not” on any number of other also-interesting or important topics.
It always helps to have a strong interest in your topic. Any topic one is motivated to study, research and think about, is a topic one might to consider writing about. 🙂
D.R. Steele,
Skepticism isn’t a belief. Basically, it is an attitude: “Show me.” Prove your conjecture, or at least present very convincing facts. Show that your conjecture is on the way to becoming a hypothesis, which requires that it must be able to make consistent, accurate predictions.
CAGW does none of those things. In fact, every alarmist prediction has been wrong. The only people who still believe in it are True Believers, who are incapable of changing their minds. A new great stadial could appear, bringing mile-thick glaciers down on chicago again — and the die-hard alarmists would still be wringing their hands over runaway global warming.
That’s the difference between scientific skeptics, and all the rest.
Skepticism is a philosophical tradition which involves various beliefs.. For example, Greek skeptics like Carneades maintained that there is no way to distinguish true perceptions from false, and David Hume believed that inductive inference has to be unsound. These are beliefs.
“Climate Skepticism” is something different, but it too involves beliefs, most obviously the belief that the climate is not highly sensitive to increases in CO2 (or at least that this has not been demonstrated, but my impression is that most climate skeptics, like me, hold that sensitivity is in fact low, not merely that high sensitivity is unproved). Climate skepticism is not a single belief; it is a belief system, just as, for example, atheism, which is skeptical about the existence of gods, is a belief system, as is theism. A belief system which arises in response to another belief system in order to contest it is still itself a belief system.
However, the main point I was making was not- that both climate catastophism and climate skepticism are belief systems. My main point was that belief is powerful. Tim Ball exemplifies the tendency to assume that if you can uncover mercenary or self-interested motives for propagating some belief system you have explained it. This approach tends to overlook the fact that belief is a powerful force by itself. History is filled with cases of people enthusiastically devoted to some belief system, and it’s clear from observation that a great many climate catastrophists are passionate believers. I think you agree with me on this point.
From what you are describing, we can consider so called deniers as individuals that go through life with a “glass half full” (+ve) approach versus those that go through life with the “glass half empty” (-ve) approach with both positions being held independent of any evidence demonstrating the case for or against.
The “denial” approach may have been an instinctive skeptic reaction to the hypothesis being tabled 30 years ago but today this position is based on established data, a better understanding of the limitations of the models projecting doom and gloom together with the unearthing of the East Anglia data manipulation fiasco and the associated collusion.
Finally, we also have a better understanding as to the motives behind the UN’s stated approach to funding their proposed grandiose adaption and mitigation projects in the developing nations and the transfer of wealth to those nations as means of leveling the so called delta between the haves and the have not. (Google “Resource Allocation Framework”)
In summary the so called denial position can no longer be considered a touchy feely “belief”.
“The US Founding Fathers set up a system of checks and balances to prevent concentration of power.”
This is of course entirely false as proven by the events of U.S. history. The U.S. constitution was either set up to centralize power, or it was written to prevent the centralization of power and is unsuitable to the task. Either way, the U.S. constitution has been used to centralize power in the federal government. That is just utterly obvious.
“We must, therefore, emphasize that ‘we’ are not the government; the government is not ‘us.’ The government does not in any accurate sense ‘represent’ the majority of the people. But, even if it did, even if 70 percent of the people decided to murder the remaining 30 percent, this would still be murder and would not be voluntary suicide on the part of the slaughtered minority. No organicist metaphor, no irrelevant bromide that ‘we are all part of one another,’ must be permitted to obscure this basic fact.” ~ Murray N. Rothbard
Well Mark, I would think you need a refresher course on the US Constitution, because it really does establish a system with checks and balances. It is when politicians deviate from those rules that they swear to uphold, without any consequence at all, that things go pear shaped.
Just the ninth and tenth articles of the bill of rights, should be sufficient to prevent concentration of power in a central government, but very few Americans even know that the ninth amendment exists, and only slightly more know about the tenth.
Throughout history, failure to curb the excesses of those in power, has led to the loss of freedom, and the rise of tyrants.
“Well Mark, I would think you need a refresher course on the US Constitution”
And you would be wrong.
A piece of paper which, from the beginning, has been interpreted by the Central State is not a constraint on the power of the State itself. A simple look at history would put lie to your belief that the system can stop the centralization of power in DC.
http://bastiat.mises.org/blog/constitution-failed
Exactly Mr Smith.
“But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.” ~ Lysander Spooner
I agree with George that the Constitution was written to limit the power of the Federal (centralized) government. I agree with Mark that it actually has no real power to do that and has obviously failed. Since the purpose of the Constitution is to limit power, powerful people have been attempting to deconstruct it since it was put into place. Perhaps the biggest ‘de-constructors’ have been some of our ‘greatest’ presidents, like Lincoln and FDR, but the majority of the dismantling has been done slowly by the Supreme Court under the influence of powerful groups and individuals, one tiny step at a time.
Most of what congress has done over the last 100 years has been unconstitutional, or at the very least, ‘extra-constitutional’. “Promote the general welfare” has been twisted to “provide the individual welfare”, which gives the federal government carte blanche to stick its nose in every ones business. We are rapidly becoming a co-dependent, dysfunctional nanny state, and it seems like the majority of the citizens like it that way, or at the very least, tolerate it. Collapse of one kind or another is inevitable, followed by revolution. A new nation will rise, and that nation could hardly do any better than adopt the US Constitution as its founding document. There would be just one alteration to make it last longer the second time: All representatives, senators, presidents and judges will be picked completely at random and serve no more than 4 years.
1913…..when Senators were now elected not appointed…was when it really started coming apart, with a giant shove from progressive extrordinnaire Woodrow Wilson.
Mark,
I think frustration has led you into confusion. George is correct that the intent was certainly to restrain the concentration of power.
It seems like the verbiage is overly vague. For example, “nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;” should be probably be written as:
“nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of the judiciary;”
In other cases, the language is quite clear, but has been clearly misconstrued by the supreme court. For example, how could “To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;” be distorted into “the federal government can do anything it wants to”.
Of course, as we know, all the checks and balances in the world mean nothing if the majority of people simply do not respect the concept of the individual’s right to life, property and liberty.
“I think frustration has led you into confusion.” ~ VikingExplorer
There is no confusion on my part. Frustration? Sure, there is frustration.
If you will look at the Articles of Confederation which the U.S. Constitution replaced you will see a document that was perfect to keep a weak central government and guarantee the various states the right to “vote with their feet” by leaving the union at any time that the state felt necessary. We rarely even mention the Articles in social studies any more, even in private schools. After all — everyone knows that the Constitution was enacted to “keep us free”. Eh? A modern “consensus” if you will.
Some have called the Constitutional Convention a coup d’état overthrowing the first government of these united states that had won freedom from the crown. Regardless if you believe that or not, the extremely rich men who met in secret to hammer out the Constitution were known to be looking for more power vested in the central government and not less. That part is not controversial.
As to your other points, lawmakers have long known that vague language allows for expansive interpretation later in the courts where the real law gets made. The U.S. constitution abounds with such language — and it calls for the central government to be the final judge of the meaning of the words in the document. That is a recipe for tyranny.
Oh, and the rascals waited until Jefferson was out of the country, sent to France, to do the deed. Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not.
Frustration? Sure. Frustration at a populous calmly watching an ever growing tyranny as they ignore it all to watch football and shop on-line.
~Mark
George is basically correct. The Founding Fathers knew that a document could only accomplish so much, for so long. Firearms are the underlying protection of the Republic. Every time the Second Amendment is weakened, the Bill of Rights becomes more and more just a piece of paper. When the Second Amendment falls, the rest will soon follow.
George,
“Throughout history, failure to curb the excesses of those in power, has led to the loss of freedom, and the rise of tyrants.”
To that should be added the Erosion and Removal of Democracy as people across the EU are beginning to realise.
“””””…..Most of what congress has done over the last 100 years has been unconstitutional, or at the very least, ‘extra-constitutional’. “Promote the general welfare” has been twisted to “provide the individual welfare”, which gives the federal government carte blanche to stick its nose in every ones business. …..”””””
“Promote the general welfare”
This appears NOWHERE in the United States Constitution.
That is an extract from THE PREAMBLE, which is simply an introduction to what the Constitution is about; The library card extract if you will, and sadly, it is the only thing a lot of Americans ever learned.
The first words of the US Constitution are NOT “We the People ..”
They are “Article I ”
In Article I, section 8 first clause, you will find the following words :
“…… to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; ….”””
I don’t see any “promote” in there anywhere.
And the only GENERAL WELFARE that is to be PROVIDED FOR is the general welfare OF THE UNITED STATES;
NOT of tom, dick and harry.
And THE UNITED STATES is ONE of the three entities that are parties to the contract, that is the US Constitution.
The others are “The several sovereign States” , and “The People”.
So it is that Washington DC entity, whose general welfare is to be “provided for” , presumably by the States, and through them, by the people.
So it is a bottoms up provide for, and not a top down promotion.
In return THE UNITED STATES guarantees to , well read it:
“””…Section 4. The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion;…”””
That’s Article IV section 4, in case you did not already know.
So why aren’t they protecting the States from the current open border invasion.
Note that this section is something that the Constitution says The United States …MUST DO…
Article I section 8 tells THE CONGRESS the 17 (or 18) things that they MAY DO.
The 18th clause says in part :
“”…To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, ….”
The trouble is, Congress doesn’t know the meaning of the word NECESSARY.
‘ (A) is NECESSARY for (B), if and only if, absent (A), (B) is impossible, no matter what. ‘
That means, that any problem which has two or more “appropriate” solutions, is not for the US Congress to address. The States can handle it with anyone of the appropriate solutions; none of which are NECESSARY, since other options exist.
Liberals in Congress take this clause to give them power to make any laws they like.
No they can only step in, if ONLY one “appropriate” solution exists.
But then I’m sure all my American friends already know this.
He should also take a look at the Federalist Papers.
On the other hand the constitutional requirement for no taxation without representation may be what saves the world from control by unelected bureaucrats at the UN. Ask any European citizen how they feel about the EU. Even the Pope is warning this bureaucracy.
This is very questionable since the US lags many other countries in liberty and property rights. In fact, the US is already in the situation of being controlled by the unelected (e.g. from judges to the EPA)
If there should be no taxation without representation, there should be no representation without taxation.
A British fellow once ask me how I liked taxation with representation. I replied not much.
The perfect is the enemy of the good. Obviously, our tripartite government is not perfect, because men are not perfect or even close. Read Washington, Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson, Madison. They disagreed on much, but not on the role of government to limit concentrations of power. Read Winston Churchill. Studying history gives one perspective. Some here seem to lack that perspective.
Maybe Ben Franklin could give Perspective; “I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such: because I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no Form of Government but what may be a Blessing to the People if well-administred; and I believe farther that this is likely to be well administred for a Course of Years and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other.”
Perhaps he should have written; “when the Leaders shall become so corrupted…”
I see a people who are mostly (1) occupied with bread and circuses or (2) always snivelling because we don’t live in a perfect world. The former are letting the latter rule by default, destroying what is good for the sake of an unattainable utopia. God help the rest of us, who want to create wealth and live our lives in freedom.
I believe a close study of the American Civil War, its causes and its aftermath, would help you understand America today.
You would learn that the Confederate Constitution forbade the central govt from selling bonds to finance internal improvements, eg. railroads. The framers of that constitution had had enough of a corrupt, central govt going into debt to enrich crony capitalists
This issue was decided by force of arms.
There is no such thing as a crony capitalist – it is an intentional corruption of the term capitalist by statists. The word you should use instead is fascist.
Mark
I don’t think that the US Constitution, fine document that it is, ever contemplated being abused the way it has been by the current incumbent and his socialist puppeteers.
And many before them.
I think you’re wrong.
The constitution is a great document and it would work very well if politicians weren’t able to pay off the lazy, the ignorant and the corrupt.
The system was designed for a moral people and as we all know, communists, socialists, liberals, and progressives are anything but moral.
Standards well below that necessary to run a Dairy Queen much less a country.
Thank you Dr. Ball for another fine civics lesson; and thanks WUWT for ignoring a few lame calls to “suspend” or punish Ball for his last post, also a fine civics lesson. Not to get too overheated, but we ignore these lessons at our peril. Dr. Ball is identifying clear signals of Progressive political tactics and the Great Lie in this AGW movement. Mann’s lawsuits are not really about libel, it’s about creating a new exception to “public figure” – the Scientist. If he’s been “investigated” and “exonerated”, to attack his “science” is to libel him. The press got on board with enviros before Progs took over both. We’ve seen the lie of AGW exposed several ways, but the press won’t cover it. To those offended by these blunt truths, I say fine, be offended. Then, before you waste another moment, please consider this-why are scientists using bareknuckle political tactics in the first instance? Do they appear to you to be advancing knowledge? Appears to me they are advancing a cause. Sincerely hope Drs. Edwards etc. think about it, but I’ll leave with this thought: Prog. political tactic is to respond to Ball’s Big Lie post by deflecting to something else, like attacking the author for giving offense.
I’m sure that “Drs. Edwards etc.” do think about it, but then look at their salary statements and carry on as before.
And you are right about the “deflecting to something else.” They were offended by Dr Ball because he wrote about the “Great Lie.” He did not call them “Nazis”.
I hope that they took note of how angry people are.
Paul, you have nailed a good part of what is going on here and now. Wrote several essays about it in Blowing Smoke, like Climatastrosophistry, and a whole book on the bigger communication/propaganda issues given the internet in The Arts of Truth. Regards.
Thanks Paul Courtney for saying what needed to be said. I read Dr Ball’s article three times trying to understand the offence. I still don’t see it. I was hoping Anthony would explain it. I really appreciate Anthony’s work. I bet he is getting tired of doing this blog. I think he has a tiger by the tail and can’t let go.
He certainly often becomes exhausted, and cumulative burnout is a real danger. But he also loves it; it is no doubt immensely satisfying & rewarding. He would like to have more time and energy for other things, though.
The big uproar over Dr. Ball’s IPCC-motives post (or rather the rhetorical elements used in it); the involvement of Emissaries from official academia, and now the return of Dr. Ball, points to what we can probably understate as a ‘growth experience’, for Mr. Watts especially, but Dr. Ball too.
Even Drs. Betts & Edwards, though we don’t hear from them (and I don’t fault that, since they already have various body parts hanging well out in the breeze, without jumping into the comments-Octagon), I will imagine are undergoing some rather heavy-duty adaptation.
These challenges and the efforts they mandate, make for a life very well-lived.
{Thunderbird email spell-checker suggests instead of “IPCC-motives”, “IPECAC-motives”. 8-}
[On this site, please reserve sq brackets for the mods’ edits. .mod]
No, Ted, neither Betts nor Edwards are doing any adapting. In fact, Betts finally replied and, in typical fashion, whined about the “vile” posts in the thread, blamed all of us for his inability to carry on a dialog and exited. He waited over 1000 posts to respond at all (hardly a commitment to dialog) and completely ignored what people were asking in their “vile” posts. My opinion of him lowers every time he posts anything. He is pathetic and everyone should treat him as such.
Mark
Thanks Mark. Between holiday-festivities, work, and a flood of action on WUWT, I have not yet been able to look seriously at the wider context of Drs. Betts-Edwards.
Back in the sub fleet, we were perfectly polite & gentlemanly with our Soviet counterpart. Of course, should information indicate, we were also perfectly prepared to hit the vaporize-button.
I do have high on the list, to research our counterpart. Your counsel is timely, and appreciated.
Ted
{curly-brackets it is! :}
Dr. Ball,
This is a great improvement.
Thank you.
Indeed, he is right on about media bias and group think.
I was listening to CBC’s noon radio show about science (Quirks and Quarks) and they were talking about the culling of wolves because some herds of cariboo were at risk (mostly from human causes) and then they were talking about polar bears and the researcher said that while the populations were growing in some areas that the future looked grim – and it was all the fault of global warming of course. Mention also made about how global warming would lead to more severe winter storms too. I would have loved to hear other sides to these arguments on the show, but that doesn’t seem to happen any more.
Pity.
Thanks to Dr. Ball for a great article!
John, I also heard do the Quirks and Quarks show on CBC about the polar bears in the south Beaufort Sea. The “expert” mentioned that the CO2 level, being 400 ppm, was the direct cause of the “drop” in population to about 900 at present. He also said that the population had “stabilized” at that level, which I take to mean it has remained at 900 for a while, as the CO2 has continued to rise. How about that.
So I learned something today: when you are a scientist you should find something dangerous and negative and then blame it on CO2 from human activities. Then you get a job.
I also learned something else today. When there is good ice cover but not too thick and a bit broken up, polar bears do well. The seals have to come up at holes in the ice. When the ice is really broken up, the seals can effectively hide on small floes. The bears suffering. When the ice is really melted the seals have to go to land to deliver and breed and all. The polar bears do well again. Those areas where the ice used to be thick and now have thinner and a bit broken up floes have expanding populations of polar bears because the seals can get there and survive. The “expert” avoided all these details and bewailed the drop to 900 in the south Beaufort Sea where the ice is more broken up, he said. He also didn’t mention the rapid recovery of the ice in recent years. I guess that would be off message.
Aren’t there 900 polar bears roaming the streets of Churchill, MB alone?
I used to love Quirks and Quarks (aka Kooks and Quacks), but I can`t listen to the show anymore because they continue to promote the deception of anthropogenic climate change. There are other CBC shows which do the same thing, its like they`re stuck in November of 2009.
And the CBC brass wonder why their listener and viewer audience has dwindled. Astonishing.
@ Klem dito, their one way delivery has become nauseating and I stopped listening about the same time, 20 or so years ago they were at least somewhat impartial.
“The mentality of gangsters” quote is not Lord Acton. It was added by others hoping to leverage his authority. He didn’t say it in his letter to Bishop Creighton when he wrote,
Furthermore, a search on text by Lord Acton shows no instances of him using the word “gangster” which I doubt was ever in his lexicon, and originated in American parlance around 1895-1900, well after his famous essay on power in 1887.
Terrific example of The Arts of Truth. Wonderful. Thanks. Precision is to be valued.
Yes, but I have always taken issue with the quote, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”; as it lacks a vey important single word, The word is reveals. So the quote becomes more accurate when spoken this way, Power tends to reveal corruption and absolute power absolutely reveals corruption.
History has examples of great men who were not corrupt, but remained true to high deals, even with great power. In my own little world I hired from 5 to 150 people each day, and I choose disparate production foreman. Placing them in power did indeed reveal their character, sometimes to the negative, sometimes to the positive, but the essence of virtue or corruption was re existent, and only revealed by the position of power. Recognizing this, over the years, I improved my ability to pick leaders. It is a certainty that giving a corrupt individual power, will expose that corruption.
Let’s also remember the last line of the second to last stanza of the WH Auden poem, “You must love your crooked neighbor with your crooked heart.”
Yet the quote is assigned to him: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/l/lordacton409907.html
and
http://thinkexist.com/quotation/and_remember-where_you_have_a_concentration_of/214510.html
There are others
Wikipedia requites itself; or at least the Lord Acton-quote:
That sounds remarkable like the current juncture at WUWT.
“However, money was not the reason for the cabal who orchestrated the entire deception. They were members of the Club of Rome because of their power. Sometimes that power came from their wealth, but most were already wealthy. Some, like Al Gore or Maurice Strong, made additional money from their involvement, but that was not the motivating factor. ”
And yet billionaires are currently pushing space tourism and delivery by drone.
Me thinks you are being too kind Dr. Ball.
clearly there is an element of fear as well as greed among the wealthy.
imagine we have a very large pie to divide up. The Al Gores of the world are saying “take a smaller slice”. Why would Al be saying this, when he is already taking a huge slice? The reason is simple, he is afraid that if everyone starts taking anywhere near as big a slice as he is, he will have to get by with a smaller slice.
Al doesn’t want to get by with a smaller slice, so he is doing his level best to convince the rest of us that we should settle for a smaller slice.
The same thinking is repeated over and over among the rich and powerful. They know full well that if the rest of us were to start living high off the hog they way they are, there isn’t going to be enough hog left to go around. So rather than cut back, they are doing there very best to convince the rest of us to cut back, so that they won’t have to.
And who owns the media, who funds the political parties on both sides? The rich and powerful.
I’ll say it once again….socialism is NEVER for the socialist.
In California they (Hollywood elites) would like everyone else off the roads and out of their views, except for their maids and servants. They need “affordable housing” for the servants also. Of course at the taxpayer’s expense.
So they should pony up their fair share ……..
Jim, rather than the tax dispensation that Hollywood gets, it should be levied a special wealth tax … a just tax solely for thespians and their associated hangers on.
no conspiracy is required to make this happen. the rich and powerful, acting individually out of self-interest, want the rest of us to take less of the pie so there will be more left over for the rich and powerful.
since the rich and powerful own the media, as well as the politicians through campaign contributions, it is in their best interests to promote media stories and politicians that tell the rest of us to get by with less. that we need to be “sustainable”. that we need to cut back on CO2, since fossil fuel is running out. and pay more taxes to help us cut back on CO2. and if we don’t, CO2 will kill us.
Fred, of course it is a conspiracy, which simply means the deployment of a deception to obtain your desired immoral result.
The political motivations of the conspirators is not commonly articulated to the general public. Al Gore does not say, ” I as one of the rich and powerful, acting individually out of self-interest, want the rest of you to take less of the pie so there will be more left over for the rich and powerful including myself.
Therefore if you think that greed is a major part of his motivation, (and I agree) and he is deceptive about it, then you, by definition have accused him of conspiracy. (and I think appropriately)
and of course the rich and powerful also control the education system through the politicians, the scientists through grants and funding and the universities though alumni bequests.
and though all this people remain skeptical of global warming.
Progressives control education, for a simple reason.
Where did the concept of compulsory public funded education come from? Not Locke, Jefferson, or any of our founding documents….it is pillar #10 of the 10 pillars of communism, found in the Communist Manifesto.
There’s a 300 year history of promoting public education which parallels the promotion of republicanism and democracy since well before Locke and the Enlightenment. For centuries, it didn’t include non-landowners or women. We’ve obviously made a lot of improvement over the centuries, but the same problems that Lord Acton described and more recently Reinhold Niebuhr described remain.
Just Steve, that is a really interesting remark.
In the colonies, the Puritans of Massachusetts were the first to require that schools be offered to all children. A parcel of land was set aside from the corner of a farm in each township, and the school teacher was retained with taxes or by giving room and board. This was meant to ensure that all children had the opportunity to read, write, and perform sums.
(In the southern colonies, there was no such system; children of those with means hired tutors.)
This is a great thought, and provided a way for all children to become literate and numerate. We must remember, in the mother countries, these were class privileges. All children should learn to read and figure. But I think history now shows that it is the right and duty of the parent to raise and educate their own children, not the state; and certainly not the Feds and certainly not the UN through the Feds.
“Today, the Internet supersedes the power of the media to control the message, and therefore be vulnerable to control by the powerful.”
It is vulnerable to being controlled by crowd mentality or rather mob rule. The spread of conspiracy theories, intolerance and polarised thinking seems to have found its ideal platform in the web. There is very little or zero debate in such forums and there are plenty of them. If we just ridicule MSM continuously we run the major risk of throwing the baby out with the bath water, and then looking for more babies to throw out when there’s no more bath water. In the video below we have an Internet guy and the MSM. I know who looks best but sadly that will be missed by those with axes to grind on a loop tape.
Alex Jones disrupts BBC s Sunday Politics
Thank You Dr. Ball, I routinely monitor my Yahoo news feed…..and everyday there appears several climate fiction horror “studies” by “experts” that have now become a relentless psychological operation of hammering fear into the public mind. It has become a travesty of reporting. We have a snow storm here in the Catskills a few days ago and locals resound with “My what weird weather!” and I am stunned with how absolutely normal it is! Winters have been coming on stronger and colder now and AHHHH it climate change! The endless parade of scary climate fiction has gone so far “over the top” that the public for the most part I suspect is simply ignoring the “studies by experts” regarding said studies as the noise it is. Got down to 10 degrees F last night 100 miles north of NYC… fyi
Weather wierding is just the warmista’s transition to global cooling where they will continue to extort the sheeple for more money, giving them more power.
Just extending the goal posts of their non-falsifiable (and therefore non-scientific) CAGW.
Just one more thing that demonstrates the Big Lie.
“…games for this weekend are cancelled and will not be rescheduled due to the varying and extreme weather conditions and field closures….”.
Kid’s soccer cancelled here due to “varying and extreme weather”? In the past they would have said cancelled due to cold weather and poor field conditions. The low temperatures here of -7 Celsius this weekend are far warmer than the record lows for November of -17 Celsius. Unconsciously, the masses parrot the memes.
Look at the bright side. They could have said “cancelled due to Climate Disruption”.
My own thought on how this all came about is just a coincidence of mutual corrupting influences.
1 Some form of science was bound to be corrupted. The use of a small group with common interests, mutually peer reviewing each other, in order to create a body of work that will sustain their careers – that is how academia works. Dominate a new field and then become the experts – guaranteed tenure.
2 Choosing a new field as a stick to influence people with – is obvious. Adverts use people in white coats to sell washing powder and makeup. Why not also policies?
3 Maggie Thatcher needed to justify destroying the UK coal industry. She did that for political reasons based on the history of UK trade unionism in the 1970s.
4 Everyone else in power worldwide needed an excuse for raising taxes or (geopolitics) weakening the economic superpower (at the time, the USA).
5 These processes led to new institutions that became self-perpetuating. They generated more assumptions, biased more data and trained more recruits.
6 This small group of institutions with common interests repeated point 1 on a larger scale… and the cycle began to repeat on a global, governmental scale.
7 And the mirror happened in the media. What is the point of a Science Journalist and an Environmental Journalist in the same organisation? Not a lot if cAGW turns out to be a crock, in my opinion.
No conspiracy. No simple corruption. Just people following their careers, rationally.
OMG, someone with historical perspective! Let’s also remember that there was very significant warming for the 20 years from 1978- 1998, and many feared it was the beginning of much worse warming.
Some pushed the fears to gain for themselves.
IMO the late 20th century warming might have been statistically significant, but certainly not out of the ordinary. Similar or greater warming cycles have been observed in the thermometer era & found in paleoclimatic proxy data.
The warm phase of the PDO from c. 1977-98 was practically identical to the early 20th century warming & less pronounced in both magnitude & duration to, for example, the early 18th century warming, coming out of the depths of the Little Ice Age in the late 17th & earliest 18th centuries.
Thus the null hypothesis can’t be rejected, ie that no new source of warming, such as CO2, need be sought. The late 20th century warming was just another normal fluctuation, following a longer period of cooling around mid-century, which was preceded by the similar warming in the 1910s to ’40s.
CACA thus was born falsified on its face.
Most everything you mentioned is “conspiracy” defined as the hiding of your true motive for achieving a deceptive or immoral end. Do the politicians say, “because we need (want and greatly desire) more tax revenue and international control we are going to tax the vey air you breathe” No they say, “the world will end if we do not, the oceans will rise, the icecaps will melt, droughts will get far worse, fires and hurricanes and tornadoes to, frogs will get bigger and smaller, bees will die, etc.
In other words the deceive and lie and conspire to tell the same disaster story to meet their immoral aims.
But it is not a conspiracy when defined as “working together for covert purposes”.
There is no need for anyone to work together.
And it is questionable whether politicians saying, “because we need (want and greatly desire) more tax revenue…” is even covert at all,
M Courtney says..But it is not a conspiracy when defined as “working together for covert purposes”.
There is no need for anyone to work together.
And it is questionable whether politicians saying, “because we need (want and greatly desire) more tax revenue…” is even covert at all,
=================================================================
Regarding CAGW they clearly do not say that. They say the world will end in three years if we do not get this revenue. Three years later, they repeat the same song and dance. n many cases they know the models are wrong, the projected harms are failing, but the repeat the same claims And their own words condemn them. Not all scientist, politicians etc, associated with CAGW, but a significant number of the leaders are either Statists, Malthusian, and or a combination of both. Their own words betray their deception. You have I know read the quotes. You are correct, there is much Nobel cause corruption, peer pressure, financial leverage etc. But the conspiracy for wealth, power and control, and hatred of too many humans, is being practice by many within the CAGW movement, including many leaders ad many that formed it.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/11261872/James-Watson-selling-Nobel-prize-because-no-one-wants-to-admit-I-exist.html
Just thought I would drop this here. Refer your AGW believers to this article when they say that no serious scientist questions global warming/climate change caused by humans, and there is no climate of fear.
If this could happen to a guy of his stature, think how deep the fear and rot run. Our society is truly corrupt.
Me too. I despair at how James Watson has been treated. He has a theory about intelligence, and there is significant circumstantial to support his theory. But because it isn’t palatable, he is shunned. The whole issue of the race of black people needs to be aired (witness Ferguson). But that’s unlikely in the extreme. No one is brave enough to even discuss it. A word that describes black people in a negative sense has been rightfully discarded to be offensive, but you cannot even publish or say that word to discuss the word itself! That’s nothing other than insane. What have we become? I have always told my wife that she should be unafraid to say the truth, as it’s the truth. But that doesn’t actually apply anymore. If I state some things here now, which are the truth, this post would be wiped. That’s stunning, isn’t it? It’s not just book-burning we should be afraid of.
I have never seen an opinion piece on climate in the Guardian that remotely forwarded a rational argument. It was more equivalent to an evangelist giving a balanced opinion on Satan. Satan of course being the “deniers” as the Guardian writers defame without apology and their tool of evil purpose CO2.
As far as news, climate news isn’t news unless it’s bad news caused by fossil fuels and it’s deadly spawn CO2. Apparently it does not register with the Guardian that electricity powered by fossil fuels happens to power almost all of civilization. Talk about being unappreciative and ungrateful…
Another of these threads?
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.” Einstein
That’s a great quote! Unfortunately, both sides think they are the smart ones and the good guys- doesn’t everyone? Part of the problem is that some of the smart ones, the scientific academies, have led the “model predictions are science” misadventure. And the 4th estate has become part of the entertainment industry. We have a few scientists, Freeman Dyson who is sometimes compared to Einstein, is one, who have been skeptical since the beginning. He’s also been mostly retired since the beginning. The fact that mainly retired scientists are willing to speak out testifies to what Eisenhower said in his Farewell Address.
Well this guy thinks the Media is indifferent.
Media indifference enables global warming
Carbon dioxide levels are as high as they’ve been in millions of years. Why isn’t this a bigger story?
MARTY KAPLAN, ALTERNET
http://www.salon.com/2013/05/15/media_indifference_enables_global_warming_partner/
Because CO2, a trace gas is actually plant food.
A little more would be better.
Meanwhile I overheard a conversation on the train from work:
A young woman was saying: “She went to the US. Doing Climate Change, Earning 100K”.
Whilst the media is effectively the propaganda arm of the global warming it has a very strong co conspirator , the global educators . The constant indoctrination of our students has been undertaken as a deliberate attempt to subliminally convert our children to the global warming religion. Teachers, professors who themselves have been corrupted by politicians ,money and a naive belief in the integrity of their academic global warming counterparts actually believe what they are teaching . In Australia the global warming message has infiltrated the institutions that determine the make up of our educators and belief in the AGW religion is a prerequisite for employment in the system. There are many instances where the unemployment queues await those who dare question the theory so in the end most don’t. So despite the important message of sceptical web sites and certain media champions such as Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair the ability to reverse the systemic indoctrination that a generation of people have been convinced of is no easy task.
18 years of no warming should’ve been game over.
I cannot believe in Australia we have a conservative government so intimidated by the left that it refuses to address the issues of the national media the ABC which spends most of it resources of time money and people to bring down the current government and install one that are devotees of the global warming god Gaia. The perpetrators of the myth are motivated by self loathing hatred of man and they use the natural emotion of guilt to con people to take measures that amount to global economic suicide.
It will ultimately be through political processes ( if those elected have the courage) that we will ultimately affect the changes needed to rid us of this insidious disease.
It is of some comfort, that back when The Church and Religion really did dominate our culture & society (until the 1960s), passed many Laws in Legislature, and indoctrinated the youth literally from birth; used the carrot of Jesus’ sublime love, and the stick of eternal damnation … nonetheless ‘deviation’ was commonplace. Many pretended a minimal compliance, arguably in the face of far stronger and more-pervasive and altogether more-intimate & personal pressures.
The Mormons, a very strong and ‘fresh’ religious community with extremely strong indoctrination, must recruit new converts very energetically, to cover high losses.
The Amish etc, even with their drastic differences instilled to help make membership unsuited for a life outside the community, remain after all this time, a ‘sect’. With their high birth-rates, they should by now rival China.
Dominant Media organizations have great power, but it appears that for substantial elements of the population, it’s water off the duck’s back.
And of course, as noted by Dr. Ball, the Internet is savaging the Holy Media.
The American Protestants valued literacy for all. This was a significant break from their European places of origin.
Obviously, books were not available in the colonies. A thin sheet of transparent cow’s horn had to make do to protect the paper on a paddle of wood, called a hornbook. Once the child mastered the alphabet and the Lord’s prayer on the hornbook, he or she moved on to the New England Primer. This contained words, poems, stories, Biblical rhymes, and anecdotes about doing right. The New England Primer was used for about 150 years in this country.
The children often learned in Dame Schools – that is, women (Dames) taught children to read and figure in their own cabins (Schools).
We didn’t do too badly. A comparison of resulting cultures can be made with the Catholic colonies in South America – this was done by M. Medved.
Maybe gratitude for our country is passe now under the Cannabis Generation but literacy and numeracy for all has been an extraordinary achievement with extraordinary results. If you keep listening to this globalist UNESCO hogwash this achievement will vanish from the history books. I don’t think I will be around for that, but you should all try to avoid the situation.
Good stuff, Dr. Ball. Keep at it!
“most people don’t know the facts or how to interpret them objectively. ”
I’d say” most democrats don’t know the facts or how to interpret them objectively.” And it’s not because they are stupid, they have two things causing them to become Gruberized:
1) They use feelings and emotions when thinking.
2) They get their news from the MSM.
This is something we see a lot of, and it even appears that they react to ‘serious’ thinking, as downright uncool.
I have watched folks open a big box with something that has to be assembled, seize the Instructions and wave them in the air, launching into theatrical ridicule, and throw them melodramatically aside. And it’s not because they feel their ability is insulted; or they are rising to the challenge of succeeding without help.
It’s that looking at the Instructions is just plain uncool.
on Monday, 12,000 delegates will begin nearly 2 weeks of CAGW talks in Lima, Peru – surely, the accumulated costs to taxpayers of such gatherings must be in the billions of dollars by now.
***meanwhile, billions of people who dream of industrialising their countries are told there is only “1000 gigatonne of carbon dioxide” left to spend! their leaders might continue to play along, if the already-industrialised countries keep their promise (which they won’t) to pay them $100 billion a year and freely transfer technology.
some facts do emerge in the Press occasionally, e.g.:
29 Nov: Deccan Herald: Kalyan Ray: Lima climate meet: Will India stand up to pressure?
A bloodbath on the negotiation table in Lima and subsequent meetings is almost assured because climate change is intractably linked to economic growth and no country has ever built a low carbon economy…
According to an IPCC calculation, the world’s total carbon budget is 3670 gigatonne if the rise in temperature can be restricted to two degrees. Out of this, almost 2900 gigatonnes were spent since the beginning of the industrial era in the 19th century.
***This leaves less than 1000 gigatonne of carbon dioxide is to spend.
Unfortunately, not much carbon space is available unless rich nations reduce their emissions…
Given India’s low per capita emission, USA and European Union may not clamour for emission cut in absolute terms, but they are more likely to ask for a peaking year in the line of China.
It remains to be seen if the 19-member strong Indian team at Lima can stand up to the pressure or will give in…
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/444471/lima-climate-meet-india-stand.html
29 Nov: BusinessStandardIndia: Nitin Sethi: Lima climate talks: Setting the ground for a Paris agreement in 2015
All expectations that the 2015 agreement will lead to ambitious requirements of countries to fight climate change in the short run have already been dashed by a US-China pact, with the two collaboratively deciding their respective emission-reduction targets for the near future. While the US has announced a target for 2025, China has done so for 2030, with little expectation that the two will scale these up in the near term. Earlier, the European Union (EU) had set the tone by taking a less-than-ambitious route, too…(WORTH READING ALL FOR THE DETAIL)
http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/lima-climate-talks-setting-the-ground-for-a-paris-agreement-in-2015-114112700164_1.html
compare with the sheer absurdity of DC-based, CAGW-gatekeeping, Goldenberg’s piece in the UK Guardian this week. no-one can convince me Ms. Goldenberg believes a word of what she is writing:
25 Nov: Guardian: Suzanne Goldenberg: Obama’s climate change envoy: fossil fuels will have to stay in the ground
Todd Stern claims the world will have to forgo developing reserves of oil, coal and gas in order to solve global warming
In the clearest sign to date the administration sees no long-range future for fossil fuel, the state department climate change envoy, Todd Stern, said the world would have no choice but to forgo developing reserves of oil, coal and gas.
The assertion, a week ahead of United Nations climate negotiations in Lima, will be seen as a further indication of Obama’s commitment to climate action, following an historic US-Chinese deal to curb emissions earlier this month…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/25/todd-stern-fossil-fuels-ground-climate-change-obama
“The assertion, a week ahead of United Nations climate negotiations in Lima, will be seen as a further indication of Obama’s commitment to climate action, following an historic US-Chinese deal to curb emissions earlier this month”
=========================================
We should correct this quote to…”The assertion, a week ahead of United Nations climate negotiations in Lima, will be seen as a further indication of Obama’s commitment to climate action, following an historic US-Chinese deal to curb US emissions while dramatically increasing Chinese emissions for two decades at least, earlier this month”
Once a couple of artificial, quasi-religious definitions of “good” and “evil” were established in the gullible public mind, no conspiracy was required to further the AGW agenda, regardless of whether or not ulterior motives were behind the original formation of that agenda.
Green and renewable is “good”.
Fossil fuels and more atmospheric CO2 are “evil”.
Once those two manufactured definitions were widely accepted, the agenda was carried forward naturally and with religious ferocity by a wide variety of individuals and organizations. Even normally agnostic business interests predictably got on board for a combination of defensive and opportunistic reasons (even some oil companies pretended fealty to the cause).
The reaction across the political spectrum has been as predictable as that of the corporate world via a mechanism politicians call “natural constituencies”. Whether or not the quasi-religious definitions of “good and evil” are accepted, the political left finds AGW theory an ideal justification for increased central government regulation/control and the perfect vehicle for redistribution of wealth. For that reason, the left quite naturally embraces AGW without reservation. The political right finds the implications of AGW repugnant for opposite reasons and, also quite naturally, resists those implications. The political right has been seriously disadvantaged in the battle by its attempts to reject the implications while simultaneously accepting to various degrees those manufactured definitions the general public has accepted and on which those despised political implications are grounded.
If the theory of man-made climate change were unequivocally defeated tomorrow, the battle would continue (albeit in somewhat muted form) so long as those manufactured definitions of “good” and “evil” remain fixed in the public mind. Underlying those definitions rests the irrational and widespread assumption among economically advanced populations that “natural is good” and “man-made is bad”. Ironically, those are the same populations that owe their good economic fortunes over the past century to a public policy of “man’s dominion over nature”, .
Excellent analysis!
You’re close. It has less to do with “good” and “evil’ as it does with “clean” and “dirty”. Google “philosophy of disgust”.
The desire for “clean environment” comes from the same primeval instinct as the desire for racial purity.
Yeah, I went there. Call the Godwin police.
“There” is needlessly dangerous territory. Lots of other analogies come to mind. In any event, in my experience, only fighting on the side of “good” against “evil” evokes the kind of passion I see from the “true believers”. Saving mankind is a “good” cause; not a “clean” one. Calling it “clean” is environmental-speak for “good”. It’s a garbled lingo where the same folks believe filthy cow manure is “good” while clean, man-made nitrogen fertilizer is “evil”.
In addition to the important polarization, with its quasi-religious ‘good’ and ‘evil’, there may be a (or several) unipolar force or driver at work.
‘Cool’ is the big unipolar that jumps out. People seek to adopt or ‘display’ what is cool, without having anything specific that is ‘the’ not-cool.
Cool goes back to the Stone Age. It’s organic. It wasn’t created by current political movements. Climate Change and Environmentalism movements, though, might be making exaggerated use of cool, which could be counterproductive or inherently unstable.
The Rebel, and rebelliousness, for example, looks like another unipolar force. The rebel rebels, and that’s all there is to it. With herds and ranks & files of Cool-adherents at hand, they can serve fine as the rebellion-object.
From the time of the cheap printing-press, Media rode a wave of cool. Benjamin Franklin’s famous affection for the Pamphleteers, eg, was a ‘phase’ of his youth. He got caught up in it; it was exciting, and Cool. Ben then caught on, though, that cool is little different than what the peacock does, that hanging out preening & posing for each other … isn’t even a rut, but a pothole.
And ultimately, cool is a tool of the elite, and mass-cool is an oxymoron.
+97
There is much good advice in the philosophy of the Buddha. I wonder if he anticipated the coming immorality of the mainstream mass media where truth is the first victim in the wars of words:
Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
Unfortunately, there is nothing that “is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all.”
This is the fundamental error of all religions, including socialism and environmentalism.
There are indeed a few things: food to prevent starvation and malnourishment, potable water, clean air that doesn’t poison, affordable health care, shelter from the elements. A few other things are certainly desirable: equal justice, equal opportunity, freedom of religion, free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of tyrannies by governments and all other concentrations of power.
Doug Allen,
You are incredibly naive.
If starvation and malnourishment, lack of potable water, etc., are caused by the government policies, for example, food and water distribution helps only the corrupt officials and their cronies (look at all disasters that came out of the UN-organized “help”).
The “greater good for greater number of people” principle is totalitarian (fascist) in principle. Any help, which is not given by an individual to an individual with careful consideration of personal merits of an individual, is evil as a result.
Religion-impulses are intrinsic to the human critter, like love and xenophobia.
Basic literacy can be, is, asserted as a universal good & benefit. Western education systems are based on the Dark Ages Monastery model. Schools and campuses are distinctly Abbey-like, both physically and in their organization & function.
To be naive is not all bad. It is a form of defense. It oils the duck’s feathers.
DR ball:
what is the status of mann’s lawsuit against you?
Hey look Anthony posted another editorial by Dr. Ball and the world did not end.
Actually, the end is still coming because of Dr. Ball’s post, it’s just paused. Send money now to avoid the world ending very soon or else you’ll be sorry!
Sir Crispin was President of the Royal Geographical Society from 1990 to 1993 and Warden of Green College, Oxford, between 1990 and 1997, where he appointed George Monbiot and Norman Myers as Visiting Fellows
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crispin_Tickell
Three things jump off the page when you read Mrs Thatcher’s speech. The first is that she was surprisingly well-informed. For that we had her adviser Sir Crispin Tickell to thank: he was the far-sighted British ambassador to the UN, who had taken time off from the Foreign Office to study climate change.
http://www.monbiot.com/2005/06/30/going-nowhere/
Nigel Lawson: Global warming has turned into religion
Lawson was Chancellor when Crispin Tickell, then British Ambassador to the UN, convinced Prime Minister Thatcher that man-made global warming was a problem. Despite Tickell lacking any scientific background (he read history at university) Mrs Thatcher took the population campaigner’s views seriously enough to make a landmark speech on global warming. This led to the foundation of a branch of the Met Office, the Hadley Centre at Exeter, to study the issue. It remains one of the three leading climate institutes.
http://www.thegwpf.com/nigel-lawson-climate-science-has-turned-into-religion/
It was certainly hypocritical for Monbiot to feign shock and horror and throw Phil Jones under the bus after Climategate, when apparently Tickell mentored Monbiot as a young radical for the cause
One of the first things I assign in the global warming/climate change class I teach is Crispin Tickell’s “1986 Climate Change and World Affairs” to get some perspective on climate change-
http://www.crispintickell.com/key14.html
If H.H. Lamb’s books were online or affordable, they’d be even better.
Welcome to the website of Sir Crispin Tickell. This website has been created as an archive of his many writings – essays, book reviews, articles, lectures and speeches, on subjects ranging from climate change to global governance.
We are now delighted to have on this website the full text of Climatic Change and World Affairs, one of the first books to highlight the dangers of human-induced global climate change. The book was first published in 1977, and republished in a revised and extended second edition in 1986. Both editions are to our knowledge out-of-print.
http://www.crispintickell.com/
Crispin Tickell (Belief)
Now you come from an Anglo-Irish family. Your great, great grandfather was T H Huxley – Aldous Huxley was in your background too. Now this is a legacy of seriously thoughtful, intellectual address, isn’t it?
Well T H Huxley was in many respects one of my heroes. Aldous was as well. In fact I think if anybody had any influence on me during my adolescence, it was Aldous Huxley. And I remember going to lunch with him and he asked me what essay I was writing that day for my history teacher. And I replied it was about the relations between the Pope and the Emperor. And he sort of took a deep breath, and for about 15 minutes he spoke about the secular versus the spiritual power. And I really sat back, staggered by what I heard, because he illuminated every aspect of this immensely complicated and still continuing problem, and I found it fascinating. When I sat down afterwards to try and write my essay, I was hardly able to write a word
http://www.crispintickell.com/page65.html
Huxley family tree (partial)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huxley_family
I wonder why Brave New Climate comes to mind 🙂
Brant —
Brave New Climate !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wow~ I wished I had said that. Sorry but I got to steal that. Can’t help myself.
Eugene WR Gallun
Aldous Huxley 1962 U.C. Berkeley Speech on “The Ultimate Revolution”
Transcript – The Ultimate Revolution
March 20, 1962 Berkeley Language Center – Speech Archive SA 0269
It seems to me that the nature of the ultimate revolution with which we are now faced is precisely this: That we are in process of developing a whole series of techniques which will enable the controlling oligarchy who have always existed and presumably will always exist to get people to love their servitude. This is the, it seems to me, the ultimate in malevolent revolutions shall we say, and this is a problem which has interested me many years and about which I wrote thirty years ago, a fable, Brave New World, which is an account of society making use of all the devices available and some of the devices which I imagined to be possible making use of them in order to, first of all, to standardize the population, to iron out inconvenient human differences, to create, to say, mass produced models of human beings arranged in some sort of scientific caste system. Since then, I have continued to be extremely interested in this problem and I have noticed with increasing dismay a number of the predictions which were purely fantastic when I made them thirty years ago have come true or seem in process of coming true.
http://publicintelligence.net/aldous-huxley-1962-u-c-berkeley-speech-on-the-ultimate-revolution/
Dump UNESCO
To better understand UNESCO, consider a quote from Sir Julian Huxley, brother of the famous Aldous Huxley. Julian Huxley was the founding director-general of UNESCO when he said the following:
“The general philosophy of UNESCO should be a scientific world humanism, global in extent… It can stress… the transfer of full sovereignty from separate nations to a world political organization… Political unification in some sort of world government will be required…to help the emergence of a single world culture.”
From its inception UNESCO has been openly hostile to American values, our Constitution, and our western culture. Why in the world should we send tax dollars to an organization that actively promotes values so contrary to those of most Americans?
But there’s more. Mr. Huxley goes on to state that perhaps eugenics, the so-called science of creating better people through genetic manipulation, is not so bad after all:
“Even though it is quite true that any radical eugenic policy will be for many years…politically impossible, it will be important for UNESCO to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care, and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that is now unthinkable may at least become thinkable.”
This is the reality of UNESCO, the agency your tax dollars will once again fund. How much more hostility will the American people accept before we realize that the UN represents a very real threat to our freedom, our sovereignty, and our way of life?
http://ronpaulquotes.com/Texas_Straight_Talk/tst093002.html
The New Divinity
By Julian Huxley
This essay is taken from:
Essays of a Humanist
(Chatto & Windus, 1964)
Today the god hypothesis has ceased to be scientifically tenable, has lost its explanatory value and is becoming an intellectual and moral burden to our thought. It no longer convinces or comforts, and its abandonment often brings a deep sence of relief. Many people assert that this abandonment of the god hypothesis means the abandonment of all religion and all moral sanctions. This is simply not true. But it does mean, once our relief at jettisoning an outdated piece of ideological furniture is over, that we must construct some thing to take its place.
Though gods and God in any meaningful sence seem destined to disappear, the stuff of divinity out of which they have grown and developed remains. This religious raw material consists of those aspects of nature and those experiences which are usually described as divine. Let me remind my readers that the term divine did not originally imply the existence of gods: on the contrary, gods were constructed to interprete man’s experiences of this quality.
Some events and some phenomena of outer nature transcend ordinary explanation and ordinary experience. They inspire awe and seem mysterious, explicable only in terms of something beyond or above ordinary nature.
http://www.update.uu.se/~fbendz/library/jh_divin.htm
Sir Julian Huxley
He saw Humanism as a replacement ‘religion’, and as such represented an important strand in post-war humanist thought. In a speech given to a conference in 1965 he spoke of the need for “a religiously and socially effective system of humanism.” And in his book Religion Without Revelation, he wrote:
“What the sciences discover about the natural world and about the origins, nature and destiny of man is the truth for religion. There is no other kind of valid knowledge. This natural knowledge, organized and applied to human fulfilment, is the basis of the new and permanent religion.” The book ends with the concept of “transhumanism”– “man remaining man, but transcending himself by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature”.
https://humanism.org.uk/humanism/the-humanist-tradition/20th-century-humanism/sir-julian-huxley/
“Eugenics and Society” (The Galton Lecture given to the Eugenics Society), by Julian S. Huxley, Eugenics Review (vol 28:1)
Eugenics and Society* By Julian S. Huxley, M.A., D.Sc. The Future of Eugenics
Eugenics, Dean Inge writes in one of his essays, is capable of becoming the most sacred ideal of the human race, as a race; one of the supreme religious duties. In this I entirely agree with him. Once the full implications of evolutionary biology are grasped, eugenics will inevitably become part of the religion of the future, or of whatever complex of sentiments may in the future take the place of organized religion. It is not merely a sane outlet for human altruism, but is of all outlets for altruism that which is most comprehensive and of longest range
http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/html/eugenics/static/images/1823.html
Eugenics was an earlier mistake (mostly) by the left that was disavowed because of the horrors of German nazism.
Humanism is a big tent. There were the Renaissance humanists; there are many religious humanists; there are many secular humanists; there are many libertarian humanists.
@Doug Allen
It wasn’t really disavowed. After WWII though the Eugenicists of the winning side, after pretending (falsely) that evil was of a strictly German character, needed to rebrand themselves— they rebranded themselves as environmentalists.
Richard Lindzen
How Science can be Politically Useful
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/23/people-starting-to-ask-about-motive-for-massive-ipcc-deception/#comment-1797042
‘Evolutionary Studies’ edited by M. Keynes and G. Ainsworth, Macmillan, pp 256, Pounds sterling 35
JULIAN HUXLEY was born in 1887 and he died in 1975. From the end of the First World War through to the early 1960s, he enjoyed a formidable reputation as an evolutionary biologist, a science writer and broadcaster, and as something of a political activist. His creed was humanism, while his medium was the Eugenics Society and, for a time, UNESCO.
With incredible energy, he helped to found the World Wildlife Fund, IUCN, the Ecological Society and the Society for the Study of Animal Behaviour. He received numerous awards and other honours for his services to science and to society. For example, he gained prizes for popularising science, for writing
English verse, and for contributions to planned parenthood, conservation and evolutionary biology
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12617155.100
Evolutionary Psychology
and Our Mythical Dark Nature
The Western intellectual community now finds eugenics repul-sive and roundly condemns racism based on Social Darwinism. Yet its allegiance to philosophical naturalism leaves it vulnerable to abuse, especially now that advances in gene research allow for genetic “improvement.”
Julian Huxley declared in 1963,
The population explosion is making us ask…What are people for? Whatever the answer…it is clear that the general quality of the world’s population is not very high, is beginning to deteriorate, and should and could be improved. It is deterio-rating thanks to genetic defectives who would otherwise have died being kept alive, and thanks to the crop of new mutations due to fallout. In modern man, the direction of genetic evolution has started to change its sign, from positive to negative, from advance to retreat: we must manage to put it back on its age-old course of positive improvement.
Any time a leading thinker uses phrases like “general quality of the world’s population” and “genetic defectives,” the rest of us should invest in home security systems
http://www.gwu.edu/~ccps/rcq/issues/8-4.pdf
One should ask oneself this question:
Who are the Priesthood of the new religion of “Scientific”(I.E. Darwinist) Humanism that Julian Huxley advocated? It’s not a trick question.
Dr Ball,
Thanks for you efforts in helping people understand the central role of Maurice Strong as a principle Godfather of the CAGW scam.
However we would be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge the other Principle Godfather Crispin Tickell .
I hope I’ve helped out in this regard 🙂 and anxiously await Richard Bett’s An Tamsin paying homage to their benefactors and intellectual heritage :: ))
cheers
brent
Good contribution Brent. Thanks for that.
It seems that the same kind of folk who embraced Eugenics are now Global Warming ® enthusiasts. That, of course, is not surprising as the motivations at various levels is the same.
“are” the same obviously.
And they are both still “at it” Tickell prominently so, James Martin School at Oxford, University of Arizona, Action for a Global Climate Community, Global Leadership for Climate Action, (offshoot of Tim Wirth’s UN Foundation, check out the names on that site, includes George Soros amongst many others, http://www.globalactionnow.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3)
Also The Climate Institute, http://www.climate.org/about/bod.html, formerly China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, (CCICED) with Pachauri, Strong. This guy is everywhere still.
Dr. Ball, in my humble opinion a very worthy post.
As background, Media ‘truth’ in the internet era was explored somewhat rigorously in The Arts of Truth. Media complicity in AGW was exposed multiple times in Blowing Smoke, most graphically in the eponymous essay.
Part of the media issue is a lack of minimal due diligence–something Monbiot is apparently incapable of. Thatnmakes them mere amplifiers for whatever smoke,themsupposed experts are blowing to keep,their research grant gravy trains going. Blowing Smoke essays Shell Games (corals and oysters and ‘ocean acidification), Greenhouse Effects (poleward spread of pests), and Snows of Kilimanjaro (Al Gore and Inconvenient Truth) make this clear by example.
Tim Ball says, “In my recent article about the motive behind the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) deception on global warming, I challenged people to offer an alternative suggestion to my proposition that it was about political power and control.” And he adds, “However, money was not the reason for the cabal who orchestrated the entire deception.”
Not to be too picky, but they do need at least 100,000,000 dollars per year. That’s for annual costs of running the World Empire (“United Nations”).
They also seek a small degree of political legitimacy, so that the World Empire appears voluntary on the part of the betrayed nations.
As we already see, $100 bn/year for the World Empire will be based on the betrayal and deception of individual countries and citizens, for none of us have ever agreed to it; but if it can be done with some level of willingness in tiny degrees, this is considered to have been done with consent.
The $100 billion dollars per year may have been the basis of the secret talks with Beijing.
100,000,000 = 100 million (not billion)
One World-State Empire $100,000,000,000.00 per annum.
Cash only. No checks. Subjugation guaranteed.
Sorry, still making a bit merry here for the holiday. Would you believe I meant to write one thousand one hundred millions, in the English manner? (:
Thank you Dr. Ball
There are numerous interesting comments on this thread.
Mike, Be aware that Tickell dislikes Tom Wigley; this isn’t hearsay – I
know this for a fact. After Tom published that “delaying -emissions
cutbacks – scenario” analysis in Nature, Tickell told me that Tom was
irresponsible, & had damaged the likelihood of the cc issue being addressed
seriously. There is also the baggage about Tickell pinching some of CRU’s
ideas & Tom telling him so rather unsubtly. So – he needs to be the “sort
of top research scientist we know is interested”.
Trevor
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=2088.txt&search=wigley
Grubb is good at impressing ignorant people. Crispin is not only ignorant
(in the economics area) but also a *real* snake in the grass. What he
will do is vote on the basis of what he can get out of it, not on the
basis of knowledge-based and fair judgement. At least Woods and Mason
will be more balanced — but their knowledge in these areas is also
superficial. The trouble is that all three *think* they know more than
they do. I think you are up against it. However, good luck.
Cheers,
Tom
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=5173.txt&search=schellnhuber
I’m always impressed by Dr. Tim Ball’s extensive learning and writing style and usually agree with
most everything he writes. I do think that he often skates pretty close the conspiracy and self-congratulatory edge. I wish we had more critical thinking about Ball’s question, “an alternative suggestion to my proposition that it was about political power and control” because the answer is very important and so is the way we frame the answer if we want to convince others.
Well, analytically, first off, Money & Power aren’t the motives, they’re the goals or objectives. Understanding motivation can be extremely useful & empowering, but it is usually difficult & risky. (Animals hide motivations, because revealing them makes them vulnerable.) Goals, otoh, are relatively easy, and safe to discuss.
Goals are like checkers, while motives & motivations are deep-chess.
If we just want to look at goals, and only use ‘motive’ as a synonym, then alternative explanations for the IPCC’s activities are simpler & safer than digging into motivations.
The UN itself is an artificially, even farcically created Bureaucracy. The IPCC is an ‘office’ or portfolio, within an organization that is removed from the usual cultural, societal and National ‘medium’ in which natural bureaucracies are embedded.
I’m open to the possibility that the UN is a bought & paid-for low-grade boogeyman (among other quasi-covert roles). So many either angrily denounce it, or snidely snicker & leer at it … and the UN seems to go out of its way to reinforce these reactions. Here’s how this might ‘work’, both for the UN and for those who write the support-checks.
Like Cuba. It does not seem farfetched, that long ago Cuba figured out that they are a much bigger & more-important frog as the perennial whipping-boy of the USA, than as just-another Latin American, Caribbean nation-state. It’s their claim-to-fame. It’s leverage & cred, in their relations with others. They aren’t a bastion of ideology on their island: they’re small-time dairy-farmers, milking a cow that the USA ensures has enough grass.
The UN arguably attracts its most notice & notoriety, as a threat to or erosion of National Identity. People who may normally shun the appearance or symbols of Patriotism, often become quite defensive of – and appreciative of – their own country, in response to UN ‘incursions’. In the USA, this is a big effect & dynamic – driven directly by the UN.
The UN also serves as a bought & paid-for ‘back-bench’, or ‘loyal opposition’. For it to appear to the world at large that the Sole Super Power is unchallenged, can become ‘unhealthy’. But wait! How can that be?! See – the USA is plastered with UN spit-wads! America is a pincushion of UN-prickles!
Especially following the demise of the USSR, and the continuing struggles of Europe to create a credible competitor to the USA (modeled on it), the UN serves extensively as challenger, adversary … a gadfly which brings smiles to many – even in the US.
Honestly, the idea that we were going to use computers to divine what the climate would do, always had severe believability-problems. Even today, we cannot create adequate models, and computers lack capacity. How is it that we were supposed to have been able to do those kind of things, back in the IBM PC days? Digital chicken-guts.
Decades back, we had a lot of Third World. Today, we have a lot of Emerging Economies … who are VASTLY overshadowed by Established Economies. Keeping the up-and-comer’s morale up, keeping them in the game against competition that can simply own them lock stock and barrel at any time … this is a quite pervasive & serious difficulty.
The antics of the IPCC serve multiple pragmatic, international, global-relations and ‘narrative’ roles. All of them – like the real status & role of Cuba – kept between the lines and behind a smokescreen.
“Conspiracy”? No. Business as usual.
Reblogged this on Centinel2012 and commented:
The end “never” justifies the means no matter what Saul Alinsky said!
Tim Ball,
“In my recent article about the motive behind the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) deception on global warming, I challenged people to offer an alternative suggestion to my proposition that it was about political power and control.”
Step back, take a deep breath. Your last post was over the top and grossly inappropriate.
Yes, there are some people who want to use warming driven by GHG’s to advance specific leftists and green political objectives. Heck, there are people who would use ANY excuse to advance those same objectives. There are people who would use any excuse to advance a wide range of political objectives, not just green/left objectives (think ISIS).
But, no, that does not mean you should paint all people you disagree with using a broad brush. There are people who honestly believe that GHG driven warming presents a serious problem, and one which should be dealt with. The fact that I think they are mistaken, or that you think they are mistaken, does not mean that they should be described as similar to Nazis (as you clearly do in your recent post) or similar to a host of other despicable historical figures.
.
References to Nazi’s are inappropriate. References to Pot Pol are inappropriate. References to Stalin are inappropriate. Stick to the science. Don’t exaggerate. Don’t hyperventilate. Don’t insult. GHG’s obviously warm the Earth’s surface. The only important question for public policy, and the question you should be focused on in your posts, is how much they will warm.
You obviously haven’t been paying attention…………..
Yes, there are some people who want to use warming driven by GHG’s to advance specific leftists and green political objectives.
Don’t forget right wing interests. Thatcher was a conservative and crony capitalists have increased their wealth immensely on the backs of “green” initiatives.
But, no, that does not mean you should paint all people you disagree with using a broad brush.
He didn’t.
The fact that I think they are mistaken, or that you think they are mistaken, does not mean that they should be described as similar to Nazis (as you clearly do in your recent post)
I read that post, hand he did no such thing. But this thread is about this post in which he didn’t even mention that topic, so why are you complaining when he is already steering clear of the very thing you demand he steer clear of?
References to Nazi’s are inappropriate. References to Pot Pol are inappropriate. References to Stalin are inappropriate.
Not one of which are mentioned in this post. You smear Dr Ball with things he never said. Perhaps I missed it? Could you quote the exact words where he said this?
Stick to the science.
If you believe that the science and the politics are not inextricably linked, then you are either very new to the debate, or just naive.
The only important question for public policy, and the question you should be focused on in your posts, is how much they will warm.
Who are you to say what anyone should write about? I have contributed both science based and politics based articles to this and other sites. Are you going to tell me which topics I cam write about and which not as well?
I don’t know if you are a well meaning new comer, or a false flag operation, but you do Dr Ball a considerable disservice with your remarks. Dr Ball has written extensively about the science, and I for one have learned a great deal from him. Unlike most of us however, Dr. Ball has lived the politics, been a victim of the politics, has suffered personally because of the politics, and all because he stood up for the science. He has more right than most to speak out on both.
Seve – you clearly COULD NOT have read any of the now nearly 1000 responses to the simplistic (and wrong) rebuttal by warmunistas Edwards and Betts. I refuse to yet again point out where this rebuttal is completely wrong – so get off your lazy butt and check it out for yourself.
You owe Tim Ball an apology.
When we chose an analog or example or illustration to help readers understand the topic we are writing about, we don’t want the analogy etc to ‘take over’. When that happens, the analogy or rhetoric has ‘hijacked’ the article.
In TV-entertainment, it is fairly common for a minor character to be embraced by the audience, and to ‘steal the show’. This can irritate the lead-actors, and sometimes alters the nature of the program … but the business still ‘works’.
When writing essays, analogies and rhetorical devices should be chosen to be ‘neutral’. If the readership become embroiled in discussion of our analogy, the topic of our piece was Shanghaied. This is avoidable, because we can usually recognize that a given analogy will be ‘disruptive’.
But there isn’t much more to it, in terms of Dr. Ball’s IPCC-motives post. He sabotaged himself a little … but nothing he can’t pick himself up & move on from.
Show the data, show the evidence, show only things that can be reproduced, show only truth that all can understand, do not hide lies in long new data dumps of much more detailed fraud.
Work outside in the sun, work for say $25.00 per hour, work 10 hour days, with two weeks vacation, never go to conferences by air to a resort island, if you get caught in more than three lies you must resign your PHD for cause.
Things are known now, you cover is blown, hang your heads low, go and sin no more.
Mike Mann is a new “medicine man” very much like the Sioux medicine man who had the Sioux believing the ghost dance would make them “not hurt by the white mans bullets”. Just a larger scale scam with a much longer and odd dance of numbers..
I know we tried to stay out of that war. But the Greatest Generation did defeat Germany’s European objectives, at great cost to themselves.
The spoiled rotten cannabis generation coming after them have no right to tell any one that we don’t discuss pre-war Germany. We can discuss it all we want, including but not limited to:
National gun registry
national gun seizure
nationalized education
Sunday compulsory state education
nationalized health care
eugenics/population control
excessive bureaucracies and system of licensing for business
And references to Stalin are appropriate, as well as Mao, because of the agricultural policies supported by top-down state science, alive and well amongst the sustainability movement. For example, five year plans have been introduced into Europe and the US attacking conventional agriculture and promoting organic-only practices.
Go fish, Steven Fitzpatrick.
plus 10
The Press bears part of the burden of the Prophet.
The press is tasked with exposing injustice, corruption, fraud and waste in society.
Isaiah declared:
Should the Press fail, will others rise to the task?
You’re reading it.
Just don’t let the government screw it up in the name of neutrality.
Another communist/socialist/liberal/progressive misnomer.
Somewhere along the lines journalists decided that they were a profession rather than an advocation.
At the same time they decided that it was more important for a young “journalist” to attend the right journalism schools than it was to learn the ropes from a seasoned veteran.
As a result of their newly acquired “professionalism”, they decided that they were more important than the people they were covering and smarter than their readers.
They no longer sought to inform the public and decided that it was their job to educate the public.
At this time they started ignoring any fact that they believed the public did not need to know, and slanting the news they did cover in order to shape public opinion more to their liking.
How do you know this is a great post? The FemNazi is mad – http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2014/11/up-yours-sez-anthony-watts-with-another.html
Oh yes, I used the word “Nazi” will Mosher give me a timeout now? Did the sky fall and the committee reject Anthony’s upcoming Nobel Prize?
Pop: Sou’s place is so anti-Watts I’d describe her as a stalker. As it is, it’s more a like a Sou-er there, and i don’t like mixing with effluent. That said, I was not surprised to see a few ids of warmists I have come across on other blogs.
My last post went into the filter.
In the beginning science and academia were the field of “wise” “educated” “smart” “curious” “inventive” ….. people from a given society, which society supported financially academia either by private funds to the whole university and to departments, or later in time , public funds and “academic freedom” was an attribute of the universities. This meant that a professor could pursue his (hers much later) research without strings other than the integrity and ethics of the society.
This changed insidiously, particularly during and after WW2, when the needs of the war pulled in a lot of scientists to produce the known results of the Bomb etc . This came because of the patriotic feelings of the scientists , they gave up willingly their academic freedom in favor of directives because the society was at war. The path was created though.
The second change came when the markets came into research. This also happened insidiously, because it started in disciplines directly connected to products, medicine and the biological sciences a good example. The bad thing for academia being mixed with market forces is that the work is planned with profit in mind. Success means more money. It does not mean “take this money, do your best with your students, and publish” but “if you want more money your product should be useful for me who financed you”. It established the money motive in academia.
End of academic freedom for researchers, because the statement is “if you want to do research you have to get a grant” . This gives control to the people giving the grant not only on the output or research, but on the future planning of the researchers now on market forces paths.
When the money was given to institutions and not persons, it was easy for a researcher to be honest with him/her self . When it goes on a personal basis with even incentives of extra pay, the thing sours. Blind eyes can be turned in the best of cases , when money is involved, and in the worst deception and greed as in all human endeavors can take root.
Now it is no longer insidious. The great majority of research is controlled by the givers of grants on a “personal” basis. At his time, in Greece in crisis, they are passing a law for the academia and research that establishes not only the need for personalized grants, but also it is imperative to get enough money from industry to be a co partner, or to show a profit !!
John 2:13 on ” And the Jews’ passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem,And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting . And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables; And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise.”
The above is my feeling at what has been happening to academia and what should be done to cleanse it, but I see little chance. Too many people get phd degrees ( the level has been lowered), too many people need jobs in academia. The writing is on the wall, to become biblical again. Academic freedom is in practice lost in the west as long as this strangle hold is on.
No wonder that in the end political agendas prevail. Money is the root of all evil.
I wonder if China, with different political/social agenda, will leave researchers free in their research, or will follow the west.
Yes, the academic-scientific institution has been bought. The government is able to form policies, and disseminate their aims & preferences through lower funding-entities. Something like the Military-Industrial Complex, a policy which also emerged from the same background.
There are some problems with this take-over. The MIC decayed in the USA, because we exported a lot of our industrial capacity. It became more important, that we hand out or distribute our industry-base, to nations & regions & cultures whom we wanted to pull into our sphere and generally ally with.
There are problems with the take-over, in academic science, too. For one, real research in various specific fields, moved to corporate labs. This has several consequences that were not wanted, and are problematic.
It is a problem, too, that people attracted to science-curricula & careers tend quite strongly have certain temperaments & characteristics, and to under-express other traits. This too creates top-level management complications, bringing into question the original take-over plan. ‘This isn’t working out like we thought it would, is it?’
Then, there is the general international competition. We have been successful in ‘bootstrapping’ formerly low-function regions of the globe, and as a result many countries that used to be ‘nothing’, are steadily becoming meaningful contenders. Now, the Military-Industrial Complex and its sibling take-over of science looks ‘lazy’; too top-down, too inefficient and even crude.
We probably do not want to go back to the old science-policy, where we supported & protected academics, and allowed them to crawl up into some Ivory Tower and maybe do something meaningful. But we probably are in the process of shifting away from the ‘bought’ science policy that is by now quite dated & archaic.
The Internet may play a role; introduce surprises on the academic & science playing-fields.
Rita Skeeter (Harry Potter ).
You cannot hope
to bribe or twist,
thank God! the
British journalist.
But, seeing what
the man will do
unbribed, there’s
no occasion to.
Humbert Wolfe
Great minds, etc, Martin. I was about to include Wolfe’s quote when I saw you’d beaten me to it. Well worth saying.
Episode V – Tim Ball Strikes Back.
29 Nov: UK Telegraph: Royal Society epitomises ‘noble cause’ corruption
Warmists say they hope ‘evidence of trends in extreme weather’ will help to ‘galvanise’ worldwide ‘action’. What evidence, asks Christopher Booker
Introducing the Society’s new report, Resilience to Extreme Weather, part-funded by the warmist billionaire Jeremy Grantham and assembled by like-minded academics and green lobby groups, its president, the geneticist Sir Paul Nurse, hopes that its “evidence of trends in extreme weather” will help to “galvanise” worldwide “action”.
The only problem is that its 128 pages produce virtually no evidence to support the belief that “extreme weather events” are becoming more frequent and intense – for the reason that virtually no such evidence exists, as even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) seems to accept…
Fortunately, thanks to China, India and others, the chances of agreement on the global treaty they are all lobbying for are non-existent.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11262103/Royal-Society-epitomises-noble-cause-corruption.html
China is holding firm:
26 Nov: SouthChinaMorningPost: AFP: Wealthy nations must lead emissions fight, senior Chinese climate negotiator says
Rich countries should do more to reduce emissions than developing ones, senior Chinese negotiator says ahead of key talks in Lima
The meeting, to be held in the Peruvian capital Lima from Monday to December 12, is intended to pave the way for a global deal on cutting earth-warming carbon emissions to be agreed next year in Paris as a replacement for the Kyoto treaty…
“Developed countries … should continue to take the lead in cutting emissions by large margins and at the same time provide developing countries with support for financing, technology and capability building,” said Su Wei , Beijing’s senior climate negotiator and a senior official of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).
China hoped the Lima conference would uphold the principles of “common but differentiated responsibilities” in tackling climate change, he told a briefing…
Developed countries were wealthier and had greater capabilities, while economic growth and poverty alleviation remained “the most urgent priorities” of developing states, said Su, whose organisation is China’s top economic planning agency.
“The agreement to be reached in 2015 must face the facts squarely and its relevant institutions and arrangements must reflect the common and differentiated responsibilities of developed and developing countries,” he said…
Xie Zhenhua , China’s top negotiator at international climate talks and the vice-chairman of the NDRC, said the approximate date of “around 2030” for China to reach emissions peak made the target “more scientific and objective”, because the country might face great uncertainty in terms of development in the next 16 years.
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1648825/wealthy-nations-must-lead-emissions-fight-senior-climate-negotiator-says
The trouble is the case for AGW can be readily made with words cleverly manipulated but the case against can realistically only be made with numbers. The truth therefore has no chance whatever with either the general public or the political classes.
Most of the UK press and the BBC has a policy of banning any one who makes even a reasonably logical case against AGW but leaves a few crackpots to claim it is impartial while actually promoting it even more by the deception. The biggest offenders are the Guardian and the Independent.
“It appears he was in the dilemma because he had not functioned as a journalist, but as a messenger for the political message about global warming, that he and his newspaper favored”
Monbiot believes most of the AGW scientists and most of the science. That doesn’t make him evil or a liar. It may make him gullible, or it may not, and maybe the long run will prove him right – or wrong. . . . Trust can be a major problem if you’re in pursuit of the truth, but it’s a very common human quality that many commenters on here display in support of the scientists who uphold their position. .
David Ramsay Steele – thanks for that piece on the power of belief, and our inclination to believe and hold fast to our beliefs no matter what. Your understanding/explanation is very close to mine. I see it at work on every page of comments on this and every other site and it’s discouraging that so few have recognised it at work in themselves and acted to minimise it. . As to scepticism, the quality that would minimise it, I see it at work here too – after a fashion – but only in relation to the enemy’s point of view, rarely in respect of the disputant’s own. Real scepticism is an incredibly rare species of outlook/disposition.
For voicing your very rational point of view you were immediately insulted. Perhaps you said something worthwhile, something disturbing . . Something that might rock all sides in this cats in a bag war . . Keep believing!
Monbiot asked why Hurricane Sandy didn’t persuade us sceptics of the reality of newsworthy AGW.
But the IPCC AR5 reports that there is no trend in hurricanes over the 20thC when warming happened.
And the IPCC AR5 reports low confidence in predicting future trends in North American hurricanes.
Monbiot claimed something meant something (Hurricane Sandy meant cAGW) but mainstream science says no. He didn’t retract or correct when it was pointed out.
Liar.
Although it must be conceded that he didn’t delete the comments that exposed him, so maybe he considers that retraction enough (wrongly)
“Arctic ice-free – especially in Summer”! Oh dear.
http://www.azocleantech.com/news.aspx?newsID=21099
***always so-called self-proclaimed, or MSM-proclaimed CAGW “experts” to keep the dream alive, even when faced with gigaton figures that totally destroy any possibility of that dream being realised. talk about throwing facts and figures out the window!
28 Nov: NBC: John Roach: We’re Kidding Ourselves on 2-Degree Global Warming Limit: Experts
A temperature rise that could cause irreversible and potentially catastrophic damage to human civilization is practically inevitable, according to rising chatter among experts in the l
ead up to a year of key negotiations on a new climate change global accord…
Given the world’s historic emissions combined with a continued reliance on fossil fuels to power humanity for the foreseeable future, limiting the increase to 2 degrees Celsius is all but impossible, according to David Victor, a professor of international relations and an expert on climate change policy at the University of California, San Diego.
“There is no scenario by which any accord that’s realistic on this planet is going to get us to 2 degrees because the trajectory on emissions right now is way above 2 degrees,” he told NBC News…
To stay below 2 degrees C of warming, the world can emit no more than 1,000 gigatons of additional carbon by 2100, according a new report from the United Nations Environment Program. ***To avoid exceeding that budget, global emissions should be no more than 44 gigatons of carbon a year by 2020, with an aim of even lower emissions after that point. The world currently emits 54 gigatons a year and emissions are growing. On the current path, emissions will reach 87 gigatons annually by the middle of this century…
“There is a huge gap in terms of the pathway that we need to be on for the 2-degree target,” Kelly Levin, a climate policy expert at the World Resources Institute, a Washington-based think tank, told NBC News.
***”But it is still possible if we adopt aggressive measures that rapidly reduce emissions. We haven’t closed that window yet.”…
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/were-kidding-ourselves-2-degree-global-warming-limit-experts-n257006
“It is no surprise that the growth of these web sites was coincident with the decline of the mainstream media. ”
Actually the collapse of the media started in earnest a few years before the internet really took off. In a 10 month period somewhere around 1994/1995, American television lost 57% of its viewers. The print media was already losing a large number of its readers too.
I was watching this with interest over here in the UK, and the collapse in our TV viewers and newspaper readers closely tracked what was happening elsewhere.
Today, just about all newspapers are barely hanging in there, and TV is in such a state, that what are considered wildly popular and successful TV shows, have viewers figures that would have had them instantly binned 30 – 40 years ago. Newspapers that used to be full of adverts due to their readership numbers, don’t have many advertisers prepared to waste money on them any more.
In fact it is rather amusing to see people moan about “everybody’s watching Dancing with the Stars” or whatever, then if you look at the actual viewers figures for various shows, they tell a very different story.
When in doubt, follow the $$’s..
“IPCC Official Climate Policy Is Redistributing the World’s Wealth”
http://thegwpf.org/ipcc-news/1877-ipcc-official-climate-policy-is-redistributing-the-worlds-wealth.html
“Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection, says the German economist and IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer. The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated.”
UN IPCC INVESTMENT AND FINANCIAL FLOWS TO ADDRESS CLIMATE CHANGE
691. The Resource Allocation Framework (RAF) was adopted by the GEF Council in September 2005. The RAF is designed to increase the predictability and transparency in the way the GEF allocates resources.
http://unfccc.int/files/cooperation_and_support/financial_mechanism/application/pdf/background_paper.pdf
Something else to be highly aware of, and very relevant. I say this as an interested observer in Communication Theory for many years.
The REAL power in communications, is pamphleteering, posters, and the Bush Telegraph. The internet just enhances its effects in speed, not in depth (in fact advertisers are beginning to discover this, as internet advertising is relatively bad value without the real effort in real world support, and social media plays to real world support, with very little effect from advertising actually on social media – which is extremely bad news for the likes of Facebook, as the Bush Telegraph is feeding into Facebook, and not the other way around).
This was brought home to me with an experiment carried out years ago by a University on the East Coast of America (I forget which one). The objective was to deliver a message to specific individuals on the West Coast by word of mouth only, and track the number of people involved in delivering that message. The average was a very big shock.
Five people.
That means nobody in America is more than five people away from the ear of the President. Think of the power of THAT means of distribution of knowledge!
It also explains how a new joke told in a school playground in Scotland on the Monday, can be being told in a school playground in Cornwall, on the following Friday.
So feed truth into the machine, and it spreads. All you have to do, is actually TALK to people.
The trouble is, Belief always trumps truth. Believers simply don’t want to hear it, are not interested, feel threatened by it, and will simply turn on the messenger.
So there’s this WW-I Battlefield joke about word of mouth communication (maybe it’s a warning, and not a joke).
The sergeant wanted to test his troops in the trenches, to ensure they could pass on orders to get the information to where it was needed.
So he tells the man at one end of the trench; “Send us reinforcements, we are going to advance.” Now pass that on down the line.
He goes down to the other end of the trench to see if his order got there.
“What’s the message, he asks the last chap in line ?”
“Send us three and four pence, we are going to a dance !”
Americans probably don’t understand the rod, stone, fortnight monetary system.
Word of mouth is nearly as useless as eye witness testimony.
I always thought the flaw in the test was that it was a test.
People will use all their contacts and initiative for something special… they’ll call Cousin Eddie whom they only see at Christmas for something special. And that cuts out three links. Speedy.
But it doesn’t reflect normal sharing of ideas.
This is yet another marvellous article by Dr Tim Ball. I look forward to the day when the Norwegian Nobel Committee might make this announcement …
… “that the Nobel Peace Prize … is awarded to Dr Tim Ball for his efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about the gross deception of man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such deception thereby preventing massive political-endorsed scientific fraud from ever happening again.”
I am Norwegian. The Norwegian Nobel Committee members are appointed according to political representation in the parliament. The members are generally yesterday’s politicians. I would also very much like to see the kind of announcement you suggest, but under the current political climate (pun intended), there is zero chance of it happening in the foreseeable future.
Wouldn’t it be great if the one they give him is the one they took back from Algore.
Unfortunately, they never took back the Nobel Price from Al Gore.
Perhaps a word or two from George Orwell is pertinent too:
“Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as “the truth” exists. […]
The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader,
or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of
such and such an event, “It never happened”—well, it never happened. If he says that
two and two are five—well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more
than bombs”
and
“Do remember that dishonesty and cowardice always have to be paid for.
Don’t imagine that for years on end you can make yourself the boot-licking propagandist
of the Soviet régime, or any other régime, and then suddenly return to mental decency.
Once a whore, always a whore.”
I’m glad to see Dr. Ball continuing his informative series of posts. I was afraid that the unfair characterization of his remarks on the Big Lie and would result in censorship. One cannot truly expose the tactics of the Big Lie without mentioning the practitioners.
The term “Denier” is a deliberate attempt to link climate skeptic to the Nazi’s. The Big Lie in Climate Science and the Media revolves around this parallel.
The second Big Lie is “Climate Change”. What is Climate Change? Does this mean Human caused Climate Change, or Human plus natural Climate Change? How do we separate one from the other?
The Big Lie is that you cannot. Thus “Climate Change” means different things to different people, and the definition can be changed on the fly, from sentence to sentence, to create truth from lies and lies from truth.
The third Big Lie is “Do you deny Climate Change?” This links skeptics to Nazi’s and to the ambiguous term “Climate Change”. This question can never be answered, because there is no correct answer. And in failing to answer the question, the question makes skeptics appear as though they are hiding something, as though they are lying.
The fourth Big Lie is Silence. In law silence means assent. That you agree. “Denier”, “Climate Change”, “Do you deny Climate Change”. These are the Big Lies. Whenever you hear those terms and remain silent, you become part of the Big Lie.
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the silence of Scientists on the continue use of the Big Lie.
Isn’t “climate” the “measure” of the average of weather over 30 years?
Define “Climate Change”.
NO !!!
The system is HIGHLY NON-LINEAR. But the integral of weather surely reflects the climate; the average does not.
Tropical storm (ersatz hurricane) Sandy, on average did very little damage. For most of its brief existence, it simply stirred up the Atlantic Ocean a bit. Didn’t bother the fishes at all.
It is only when you cherry pick data from the few hours that it spent in the vicinity of Eastern North America, that any perceptible damage can be found.
On average, nothing much happens. It is only when you have gradients (changes over some parameter or variable) that anything at all can happen.
Well I do understand data is being “selected” for a “cause”. I am just repeating what is usually considered climate. Which, as I understand, is the “average” (I know, meaningless) of 30 years of weather. Isn’t this the whole idea the IPCC uses to support the theory of “climate change” (Whatever that is) in 30 year blocks?
I agree Ferd, what is climate change? Well, it (Climate) changes every single moment of every single day across every single point on this rock. Do we measure that at all points at any and every point in time? Many alarmists don’t quite get that concept!
http://m.townhall.com/columnists/mattbarber/2014/11/30/radical-leftists-now-endangering-female-athletes-n1925262
Off topic, but then, not really. Another illustration of “modern” science gone moonbat.
Another illustration of “modern” science gone moonbat.
==========
The crazy part is that this is real. I may be wrong, but I expect the vast majority of males in high school are transgender female lesbians. As such, under Federal Office of Civil Rights, Title IX, they (transgender females – boys pretending to be girls) should all be allowed to share the girls locker rooms, and as lesbians should be allowed to have same sex relationships with true girls.
Every high school boys dream come true. Lesbian sex with females, where they play the part of the other female.
maybe the time has come for men everywhere to come out of the closet and declare themselves as transgender female lesbians. in that way we can qualify for both female rights and lesbian rights. and who knows. next step, equal access to the women’s locker room for lesbian sex in the showers.
And here in Australia, some professional sports person has died (Sad all the same. The brother of a friend of mine from New Zealand played cricket with him). But the weeks and months before his death, we were bombarded by articles about climate change. Now, we are bombarded with articles about sports people.
The MSM is a fickle beast!
It is a persistent & insistent oddity for me, that after demonstrating the ability to come that close, and with all his experience in elected office & politics, Al Gore at the age of 52, did not try again. Turned and walked away.
No, something in this picture is … photoshopped?
What Al Gore did decided to do, is in fact something at which he is well & truly known to be weak. Gore’s natural temperament & personality is so wooden & stiff, he could pass for a boardwalk. He trained heroically, so he could spend a few minutes onstage in debate, without being mistaken for the furniture.
So he goes to Hollywood. Oh, yeah, right.
Did Al Gore volunteer for … a version of what Edward Snowden says he did? Did he and his associates think that their situation called for extraordinary action? The insertion of elite leadership? Did he think that Environmentalism and Anthropogenic Global Warming was in that much trouble, already in 2000?
Well, the year his movie came out, 2006, was the first year that public polling showed clear reversals on acceptance of Global Warming. Despite that An Inconvenient Truth was a huge cause célèbre, and not just by the usual Media cheerleaders. No doubt, Truth recruited & inspired many; yet the overall numbers still sagged.
As it has turned out, Al Gore stepped from next-to-President, out onto the hyped highways of populist-Climatism … and became road-kill. He probably knew he was toast, when the movie was still in early production.
Gore has since returned to what he really is; a skilled and dedicated behind-the-scenes operative of formidable intellectual ability (as was his father). One alternative accounting, is that by 2000, politics was so painful for him that he bailed. But if so, parachuting into Hollwood makes even less sense.
Is Al Gore’s post-2000 course just the tragic story of a man who could physically count the votes by which he missed the most powerful office in human evolution? Or did he act on a plan (now also tragic) to lead an Eco-army out of an approaching political quagmire & over the top?
In Al Gore’s case, we have neither reliable motives, nor convincing goals.
Tim Ball seems to be leading into the heart of this blight.
Media collusion is a factor. But colluding with whom?
The threat of catastrophe brought on by mans CO2 emissions was indeed trumpeted by the presstitutes, but provided to them, word for word, in most cases by our governments.
Official government sources are a source of much of this misinformation.
The entire meme is a product of tax payer funded committee work.
This manufactured hysteria is a product of our bureaucrats, working together through that fine UN structure.
These unelected, unaccountable babblers have had one hell of a good run, aided and abetted by our ignorant self serving media.
Such a good run at looting the public treasuries to serve their wants that we teeter on the edge of economic implosion, such “help” cannot go unrewarded.
As for these self styled journalists, amusing in so many levels only Presstitute captures their inanity.
The story of the centuries is there for the taking,world wide mass hysteria, theft ,corruption, scandal and stupidity… along with a writer of pornographic novels..documented evidence abounds, direct written admissions from key players as to their duplicity are no secret.. yet the Mass media huddle in fear.
Once again the voter is leading the way, this formerly fashionable fear is being tossed aside as the citizens get on with living their lives, as this mood change gradually sinks through the delusions of our press clowns some will attempt to save their careers by turning on each other.
As a Canadian I live in hope that we will see criminal investigations of those among us who participated in creating and promoting this scam.Perhaps the hope we realize government is the problem rather than a solution.
For only snake oil salesmen and politicians will offer to cure a problem which does not exist.
Where is Mr. Mosher? Shouldn’t he be here demanding that Dr. Ball get timeout for exercising his right to free speech?
celebrating 500 CAGW laws and putting on a fair!
UNFCCC: Pre-2020 Action Fair: Showcasing climate action
Announcement / 30. NOV, 2014
The world is currently witnessing unprecedented action on climate change. There are now more than 500 climate change or climate change-related laws at the national level, cities are taking ambitious action to cut emissions and to adapt and the private sector has begun acting…
The themes of the fair follow the themes of the technical expert meetings held throughout 2014 and are: renewable energy, energy efficiency, land-use, the urban environment, non-CO2 gases and carbon capture, use and storage.
The fair will run on 5, 8 and 9 December 2014 in the side events area at the conference. Additionally, an exhibition with the same focus will run for the duration of the conference.
http://newsroom.unfccc.int/lima/pre-2020-action-fair/
Well the media is the messenger of the political class. Why else don’t you see much reporting on this?
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/cam/cannabis/healthprofessional/page4
Speaking of the media, is anybody here aware that the extreme left-wing Rockefeller and Ford organizations have funded a media organization called IPI that has under it around 200 news organizations from around the world? Here is who is currently under it from just the UK and the US (Do the Koch brothers have anything like the IPI that compares to this level of attitude shaping and propaganda dispersion?)
From the UK:
BBC:
Cardiff University Centre for Journalism Studies Channel 5
Channel Four Television
City University School of Journalism
Daily Mail & General Trust plc
Daily Mirror
Evening Standard
Financial Times
Five Broadcasting
Global Broadcast Networks Ltd UK Independent Television News (ITN) UK Johnston Press plc
Reuters Ltd.
Solo Syndication
The Daily Telegraph
The Economist
The Guardian
The Independent
The Observer
The Press Association
The Sunday Telegraph
The Telegraph Media Group
The Times
From the USA:
Andrews McMeel universal
Columbia university School of Journalism
Delphos herald Inc
Global Post
lA Times-Washington Post news Service
new Tang Dynasty Television (nTDTV) Scripps howard Foundation
The boston Globe
The los Angeles Times
The new York Times
The oregonian
The Plain Dealer
The Toledo blade & The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette university of Miami School of Communications uSA Today
Missouri School of Journalism
San Francisco bay Guardian
St. Petersburg Times
The honolulu Advertiser
The Manhattan Mercury (Seaton newspapers)
The nieman Foundation
The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Seattle Times
The Week Magazine
University of Missouri School of Journalism
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1350&dat=19510416&id=kKRAAAAAIBAJ&sjid=UwAEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4574,14888
http://www.freemedia.at/fileadmin/resources/application/IPI_Annual_Report_2011_Final.pdf
And note that freemedia.at (IPI) works with Google so check out the link above before Google ‘loses it’ like they lost the other freemedia.at link that had their list of media partners under a page called “IPI members belong to the following organizations:”…
“With the support of our partner Google Inc, IPI is in fact becoming a driving force supporting innovation in news. This is an important step in furthering press freedom and democracy.”
http://www.freemedia.at/newssview/article/ipi-news-innovation-contest-international-press-institute-and-google-announce-27-million-dollar.html
Keep up the great work Dr. Ball
???MSM increasingly use generic “scientists” when they mean CAGW climate scientists (whoever they are):
30 Nov: NYT: Coral Davenport: Optimism Faces Grave Realities at Climate Talks
Even with a deal to stop the current rate of greenhouse gas emissions, scientists (???) warn, the world will become increasingly unpleasant. Without a deal, they say, the world could eventually become uninhabitable for humans…
A November report by the United Nations Environment Program concluded that in order to avoid the 3.6 degree increase, global emissions must peak within the next 10 years, going down to half of current levels by midcentury.
But the deal being drafted in Lima will not even be enacted until 2020…
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/01/world/climate-talks.html?_r=0
1 Dec: Irish Times: Frank McDonald: Climate change warnings precede negotiations in Lima
Environmentalists and poorer countries insist any deal must be binding and fair
The two-week UN climate conference in Lima is the 20th to be held since 1995 and follows publication by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of its Fifth Assessment Report, which said greenhouse-gas emissions needed to fall to zero by 2100…
Deal ‘an empty shell’
But Dipti Bhatnagar, climate justice co-ordinator of Friends of the Earth International, was pessimistic. “Looking at the texts that our governments are negotiating in Lima, the climate deal that they plan to reach next year in Paris could turn out to be, at best, an empty shell,” he said.
Hopes that the Paris conference would deliver an agreement strong enough to achieve the two-degree target are already being dampened, even by UN insiders, who have said it’s unrealistic to expect that whatever is agreed will be sufficient in itself to put the world on a safer path…
UN climate chief Christiana Figueres has insisted, however, that Paris “does need to put us on track to two degrees” and that a 24-page ***“non-paper” circulated earlier in November by co-chairmen Arthur Runge-Metzger and Kishan Kumarsingh represents a “vision” of how it could work…
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/climate-change-warnings-precede-negotiations-in-lima-1.2020664
***i can’t even find the “non-paper”!
And the preach: By 2030, by 2035, by 2050 by 2080, by 2100. I guess you know where I am going here, none of these snake oil sales men are going to be around to be held responsible for the fraud and economic mess they are creating today
And “they” preach, sorry.
To end your day, or start, with a good laugh read this PravdaBerg piece. Monty Python does Crimatescience.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-28/humans-are-the-new-asteroids-as-animals-driven-extinct.html
*** why such an old pic? btw how many deceptions in this particular piece, running a regular MSM meme that only Republicans deny CAGW and many prominent Republicans are becoming believers, so get on board:
1 Dec: Bloomberg: George Shultz Defies GOP in Embrace of Climate Adaptation
By Alex Nussbaum, Mark Chediak and Zain Shauk
PHOTO CAPTION: Former U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz attends a birthday celebration held in honor of Ronald Reagan at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Feb. 6, 2011 in Simi Valley, California.
As Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state, George Shultz faced off against Muammar Qaddafi, the Soviet Union and Chinese communists.
His latest cause, though, is one few fellow Republicans support: fighting climate change…
Living a life powered “on sunshine,” Shultz, at 93, has a message for the doubters who dominate his own party: “The potential results are catastrophic,” he said in an interview. “So let’s take out an insurance policy.” …
Across the U.S., a series of weather anomalies — from a record West Coast drought to Midwest flooding and Superstorm Sandy — are gradually helping to shift public opinion on climate change, according to a string of recent polls. Two in three Americans now believe global warming is real, according to an October survey of 1,275 people by Yale and George Mason universities. That’s up from 57 percent in January 2010…
“There’s a great middle in this country that basically agrees that something needs to be done,” said James Brainard, the Republican mayor of Carmel, Indiana, who served on a climate preparedness task force organized by Obama. “They can see that weather patterns are changing drastically.” …
Activists have seized on severe weather and other geographic changes to try to shape public opinion in the U.S., the world’s biggest source of carbon emissions per capita…
Shultz, now a distinguished fellow at Stanford University, said the reality was driven home for him during a visit to the California campus by Gary Roughead, the U.S. Navy’s retired chief of naval operations. Roughead shared a time-lapse video of the Arctic ice cap shrinking over the last quarter-century.
“That certainly was an eye-opener,” Shultz said in an interview last week in San Francisco, where he spoke at an energy conference. The video showed what Shultz called “new oceans” being unlocked from the ice…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-01/reagan-statesman-s-sunshine-power-hint-of-thaw-in-climate-debate.html
Bloomberg mentions Shultz’s Stanford connection, but not his connection to carbon trading, power-plant & wind-farm owning JP Morgan Chase:
JP Morgan Chase International Council
Hon. George P. Shultz. Chairman of the Council
ALSO INCLUDES:
Riley P. Bechtel, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bechtel Group, Inc
Tony Blair, Former U.K. Prime Minister
Abdallah S. Jum’ah, President and Chief Executive Officer, Saudi Arabian Oil Company
Hon. Henry A. Kissinger. Chairman, Kissinger Associates Inc
David J. O’Reilly, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Chevron Corporation
Ernesto Zedillo, Yale Center for the Study of Globalization
BOTTOM OF LISTS, PAGE 6
This annual report is printed on paper made from well-managed forests and other controlled sources.
The paper is independently certified by SmartWood, a program of the Rainforest Alliance, to the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) standards. The paper contains 20% post-consumer waste (PCW) recycled fibers.
FSC is an independent nonprofit organization devoted to encouraging responsible management of the world’s forests. FSC sets high standards to ensure forestry is practiced in an environmentally responsible, socially beneficial and economically viable way.
http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ONE/0x0x184766/938df088-bbd9-4dca-97ea-479db9cce39f/2007AR_CorpData_ShareholderInfo.pdf
It would be good to get rid of the 1940s blip
Hide the decline
When I posted this over at Jonovas-
The bludgers are everywhere! From The Australian today (Dec 1st) spot the pea and thimble trick from the BOM and their ‘climate monitoring manager’-
“AUSTRALIA has had its hottest spring and its hottest November on record.
BUREAU of Meteorology climate monitoring manager Karl Braganza says 2014 was the latest in a long line of hot springs in the past decade.
The previous record was set only last year, he said.
“Really, it was only 2010 that had a cool spring in the past 10 years or so. Nine out of the warmest springs on record have occurred since 2002,” Dr Braganza told AAP.
Australia’s average seasonal temperature is derived by averaging the temperature data from weather stations, where records go back to 1910.
The figure is then compared with the long-term average temperature, which measures the period from 1961 to 1990.
The average spring 2014 temperature of 24.17C exceeded the mean by 1.67C, Dr Braganza said.”
‘pat’ responded-
observa –
it’s all nicely timed for Lima…
Australia has hottest spring on record as temperatures soar
BBC News – 2 hours ago
Australia sweats over extreme hot weather
BBC News – 14 hours ago
UN climate talks begin as global temperatures break records
BBC News-2 minutes ago
NOAA: 2014 is shaping up as hottest year on record
CNN – Nov 30, 2014
Yes Australia had rolled out a substantial national Stevenson Screen network by 1910 but the charlatans at the BOM have cherry picked an even more pitiful 30 yr slice of it (centred on 1975 when there was talk of a coming Ice Age naturally) and that’s their average for comparison?? You’d flunk a Senior High School kid for that garbage but the media parrot it in sublime ignorance or deliberate malfeasance, I’m at a complete loss to comprehend which.
UN climate talks begin as global temperatures break records
BBC News-2 minutes ago
The “records” have been manufactured and are right on time for the climate meeting.
They have 0 % credibility.
Not that any of it is worth a ‘rat’s tossbag’ after the current Team flunkies at the Oz BOM have finished with it-
http://www.warwickhughes.com/cru86/
Dr. Ball,
One very important correction to your otherwise great post – the First Amendment did not give any specific rights to press as we understand it today. At the time, word “press” meant “printing press”. The freedom of press meant freedom to publish, which of course makes lot more sense as Founders were not stupid enough to assign special rights, rights not given to everyone else, to an organization/company.
“The freedom of press meant freedom to publish, which of course makes lot more sense as Founders were not stupid enough to assign special rights, rights not given to everyone else, to an organization/company.”
But newspapers were more dangerous to politicians, as result newspapers were more target by politicians [as in England] to regulate. Or the modern newspaper is what the founders wanted to avoid- MSM is a bunch of dems [mostly]. The founder were talking flyers or pamphlets such things you one hand out to crowd, or nail it to a post, as well something print the night before, and distributed in the morning. The Press was essentially something like Kinkos.
But today, the Press is the internet.
Bloomberg’s “George Shultz Defies GOP in Embrace of Climate Adaptation”
article posted above has a new headline!!! same url. did the CAGW psychologists think the new one would be more effective?
George Shultz Gone Solar. Now That’s a Sign of Thawing in the U.S. Climate Debate
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-01/reagan-statesman-s-sunshine-power-hint-of-thaw-in-climate-debate.html
Your first post was better. It’s more about the big lie.
The independently applied reasoning of individuals on strictly a one-by-one effort is the only fundamental method of scientific self-correction.
That is the opposite of all hype and hysteria by people who implicitly suggest or explicitly advocate some grand con$piracies by: a) supporters of significant climate change by CO2 from fossil fuels; b) skeptics of significant climate change by CO2 from fossil fuels. Oreskes and Ball are just two sides of the same coin when it comes to proposing con$piracies; Oreskes sees skeptic con$piracies and Ball sees ‘consensus’ climate science advocate/ supporter con$piracies.
The individual is supreme in science. So, self-correction in science is in one individual at any given time or place.
John