Guest Post by Bob Tisdale
The title question is rarely, if ever, asked of people who are skeptical of human-induced global warming and climate change…for obvious reasons. If persons are skeptical of a future filled with climate catastrophes, regardless of whether they are caused by nature or by emissions of manmade greenhouse gases, then there should be few reasons for them to be fearful of future climate.
For example: some persons may most fear the future possible rise in sea levels, understanding that surface temperatures are above the threshold at which the seasonal mass losses from glaciers and ice shelves exceed those of seasonal mass gains and that those temperatures have been above that threshold since the end of the last ice age; but they temper that concern with an understanding that even the UN’s political report-writing entity, the IPCC, acknowledges the oceans will continue their inland march regardless of whether or not we limit the emissions of manmade greenhouse gases…that it’s just a matter of time. (See Figure 13.27 on page 68 of 80 of Chapter 13 of the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report. The blue curve is for the “optimistic” RCP2.6 emissions scenario and the red curve is for the worst-case RCP8.5 scenario.)
What scares me?
My fears are that:
- activist climate scientists and agenda-driven politicians who fund climate science have tainted all related fields with unjustifiable certainty of a future filled with pain and suffering,
- to manufacture those predictions of gloom and doom, the sole focus of climate science has been and continues to be on human-induced, not naturally occurring, global warming and climate change,
- the climate science community will come no closer to understanding the natural contributions to global warming and climate change until there is a total change of mindset, and
- it will take decades of that completely new mindset to overcome the present groupthink.
With that said, what are your fears about global warming and climate change?
Pretty much exactly what you wrote…
The “Climate” itself doesn’t bother me, not even a little. It’s the attempted “remedies” for a non-issue that, frankly, terrify me.
Yes indeed Code. Professor Tim Flannery, John Holdren and company advocating sulfurous compounds to cool the sun’s penetration of the atmosphere: just plain mad. Make the sky purple?! But I fear nuclear war these days. This type of end makes global warming whither into insignificance.
Funny thing about that sulphur thing is back in the ’70s, we spent billions on power plant scrubber to take the sulphur oxides out of the atmosphere.
Paul Jackson
I refer you to a post I very recently made in another WUWT thread. This link jumps to it.
Richard
I certainly agree.Fear is simply a tool of control and it has been used over an over again by governments ,dictators and so on and so on for Millenia The war on terror. recently The war on drugs The war with climate change.The enemy is sensationalised to inflame the sheeple and then it begins.Mass distraction, disunity disillusionment ,maybe a real war…the question is why.To create an environment that continues to generate wealth by stealth for the psychopathic elite.Our greatest minds are always looked to for the answer,we give them prizes scientific social,what’s it done for humanity…..big pat on the back. Well done.We have stopped listening to ourselves we have allowed ourselves to be disenfranchised we don’t communicate with our neighbours so mass revolt is minimised and love and understanding is foreign apart from hopefully the immediate family and even then that’s fragmented.
My fear is that the “government” will use it as an excuse to waste insane amounts of resources (buying influence) and to further reduce personal liberties.
They will do that anyway, so maybe climate is the best diversion of these idle minds that we can hope for.
My fear is that if they didn’t have CAGW, climate change, or anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) is it is now known, apparently, then Warmunists would come up with something even worse.
My personal vote is that these busybodies start boosting for taxpayer funded sex change operations. Here is Time Magazine’s take (Always a thought leader!).
http://cbmw.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/transgender-cover.jpg
My thinking is, at the outside this issue will only apply to some fraction of a percent of the population, so maybe the deep-thinkers will be too distracted to pester the rest of us.
I couldn’t wait to read Time 50 years ago. I have changed, but they have changed even more. What a worthless, irrelevant bunch of cut up trees.
Exactly, and in so doing, neglect addressing real problems (for example, fixing poverty by stopping the confiscation and waste of the money people earn, and by slashing job-killing regulations and bureaucracies). They could fix the “environment” by removing all those nasty windmills — make those who received government money to put them up remove them.
The big, centralized approach will never have the capacity to address local preparations for unusual weather events, and will, in fact, reduce the availability of money for doing so.
It’s inexplicable to me how the silicon valley progs believe that swarms of autonomous computers have greater intelligence than a big, central computer, yet don’t believe that swarms of autonomous, intelligent people will exhibit greater decision making ability than a central govzilla.
I never minded the wind generators until my money was wasted on them
PP,
Very good points. Individual action is like crowdsourcing. It tends to get the right answers quickly.
latecommer, I never minded the windmills, until they caused the price of my electricity to skyrocket — and until they destroyed the pristine beauty of the Northern California coastal hills with hundreds of non-working, raptor-chopping monstrosities.
Other than those objections, they’re fine… for places like the old Soviet Union.
I have no fear of global warming. In fact I encourage more of it, more co2 please. Here’s why.
What I am fearfull of are the ‘remedies’ proposed: windmills galore, energy poverty, stunted economic growth etc. Another fear is that evern if the world cooled they will blame co2 and demand greater measures. Just like the reaction of those engaged in the Cattle Killing Cult.
“Historic parallels in our time: the killing of cattle -vs- carbon”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/20/historic-parallels-in-our-time-the-killing-of-of-cattle-vs-carbon/
“The Dead Will Arise, Nongqawuse and the Great Xhosa….”
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2637402?sid=21105218911101&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=4&uid=70
We’ll bankrupt ourselves switching to alternate energies that, as they exist, will not meet energy needs. This, compounded by the huge investment, will crowd out investment in real solutions and leave us cash strapped to deal with a real crisis when it emerges. This will result in increased poverty, decreased life expectancies and civil unrest.
Another concern is that by polluting the climate history and research with agenda driven goals, we will blind ourselves to advancing our understanding of how climate cycles operate and this will impair our ability to forecast climate events in the future. Another Ice Age, mini or otherwise, will come and if we are prepared for Heat how will we be able to adapt our civilization for Cold.
Burying our treasure in the ground for no benefit.
Isn’t that the truth but no doubt will fall on deaf ears….after all the lowest common denominator is todays touchy feely way to go. There in lies the death of todays civilization. Go ask the Romans where members of the Senate sold their soul for the *next* election. The barbarians are knocking on the gate.
Climate ‘scientists’ are just pawns in the hands of the elites. The object is control of the sheeple. And they will use anything and everything to create their UN / IMF / World Bank / BIS centrally planned government. If temperatures ever go down it will still be the ‘fault’ of humanity and another set of useful idiots will be shouting: doom, extinction, more regulation, more tax, more government.
Since AGW and CAGW are nothing more than theories, I place them in the same “sphere of concern” as;
Collisions with asteroids,
Being hit by lightning
Being inundated by a tsunami
My building being struck by earthquake
withstanding a hurricane
And all other natural disasters.
Any expenditure on “prevention” is patently absurd and this I do fear.
Governments of every persuasion have a duty of care to ensure taxpayers funds are subject to the utmost consideration NOT baseless fear-mongering and gross misconduct as is the case of so many regimes right now.
Sorry, being hit by lightning is a fact with a definite, finite probably of occurring. AGW is not, being as you say a theory.
Valid point, Robert. Perhaps the scared politicians should be grounded.
To cnxtim: You meant well, but note that a theory has a large degree of acceptance. AGW and CAGW are only hypotheses.
Ian M
I HAVE been hit by lightning and it hurts…a lot.
See? You’re more likely to be hit by lightning than by climate change.
Hit by life-killing regulations and technologies is another matter. That is what I am afraid of.
Are the doctors hopeful you will recover anytime soon?
One of my soldiers was sleeping to close to a telephone line that got hit by lightning, he woke up 3 feet in the air. Surprisingly he was OK except we had to send him to the Medics for an erection likely to last for more than 4 hours.
Yes I am sure it does, but the government doesn’t really do much to prevent people fro being hit by lighting, other than warn when storms are coming and suggest that people go inside. So the government shout do even less about climate change, since that is even less likely.
Aren’t theories formulated to explain observations involving real-world data? Anthropogenic Climate Change involves observation of the selective output of falsified mathematical models of a virtual world- a virtual world formulated to exclude effects of real-world phenomena that are known to be causal factors in climate change.
Phantasies would be a better descriptor for such explanations, and mania a better descriptor of the associated “scientific” method.
The general progression is: observation > hypothesis > testing > refinement > theory > testing > refinement > law. You can insert “testing > refinement” after “law” as well. It’s a highly recursive process. Right now CAGW is, at best, in the beginnings of the “hypothesis” stage. Activists, however, treat it as if it were in the “law” stage. So not true.
I agree with Hawkins. In fact, before or concurrent with “observation” is “conjecture”, the first step in the hierarchy:
Conjecture
Hypothesis
Theory
Law
Both AGW and CAGW remain conjectures at this point, because there are no measurements quantifying either one [I happen to think that AGW is valid, although minuscule]. Without measurements, they amount to speculation; to ‘what ifs’.
It is amazing that an enormous idustry has sprung up based on a mere conjecture.
Really? CAGW is a struggling hypothesis at best. There’s little doubt of the reality of the others in your list.
Eamon.
While I agree that AGW is nothing to worry about, I would argue that some of the other items in your list are more likely, from a historical perspective if not theory.
Collisions with space objects is no theory. Earthly evidence: http://meteorcrater.com/
My home has been struck by an earthquake. Not a very big one, but the Cascadia fault is supposedly overdue for a whopper.
My state coast has been inundated by a tsunami … admittedly 300+ years ago, when the Cascadia ripped last time.
My fear echos those already stated, that the government will waste insane amounts of money to solve a “problem” that doesn’t even exist and drive this once great nation into a state of fiscal insolvency from which we will never recover.
KD to which nation do you refer?
USA, $18,000,000,000,000 in debt and growing.
Make that a $18,102,486,000,000 debt and also $93,786,493,000,000 in unfunded liabilities …… and growing.
Blame the Central Banking system and Fiat funny money for that. Impossible to pay back currency plus interest when the institution you borrowed it from has a monopoly on printing it. Unless of course you borrow more, which is what every country on the Planet has done for decades now.
I think POTUS already accomplished that mission. But ditto.
The last time the fantasies of activist scientists ran riot it led to the deaths of millions of people.
Catastrophism is a moral slippery slope. If you truly believe the future of the world and everyone you love hangs in the balance, no crime or atrocity is unacceptable. Because how could the death of a few million people, or a little tyranny, possibly be worse than the end of the world?
Exactly Eric. I believe the whole exercise has been engineered as a method of population reduction. The original prediction for SC24 was that it would be more active than any previous cycle ensuring a continued rise in global temperature. This would have ensured a more complete change over to renewable energy and horse and cart technology. When the cold did come and the population found themselves starving they would not have the wherewithal to raise effective protest.
My only fear is of the cost of arguing from ignorance.
We have had it so well and for so long that the Chicken Littles no longer can cry “The Sky Is Falling!”, but now cry The Sky Is Gonna Fall, Soon, Really! N. N. Taleb warns of prophets without doxastic commitment. See the Pareto Distribution, power law on geophysical phenomena.
My main concern is that unintended consequences of legislation to ‘fix’ the climate will do more damage to mankind and the environment than climate change ever could.
Bloke, I agree with your statement except for that I’m not sure the consequences you speak of are unintended.
I also agree that these things are intended. Everything that is bad for the West is promoted, and everything good is ridiculed and demonized.
Once or twice might be coincidence. But in every case, year after year after year? That’s enemy action.
I agree entirely. As an engineer there is nothing I fear more than the folks pushing geo-engineering. The same unthinking crowd calling for polluting the air with SO2 aerosols and for polluting the ocean with iron oxide are the ones that sold us on turning food into ethanol fuel, outlawing incandescent light bulbs with low performance mercury-containing compact fluorescents, and covering the countryside with the eyesores of inefficient wind turbines and solar panels. Man’s inhumanity to man.
Perhaps the ‘power’ that controls the powerful knew all along what the real science was and manipulated it via the UN IPCC to go this route. The knew full well that there would be a cooling phase at some point. Having wasted trillions of dollars, gutted our power systems and replaced the with useless wind farms and solar, they have set in motion the demise of millions once the cooler temperatures hit because we would lack the infrastructure to cope and by the time we realize what is happening and start building proper power stations again, by the time they come on line the untold millions of casualties will have been accomplished.
What other scenarios do they have in mind? Have the preliminary starts for these other scenarios already been launched? The immediate results may not not reduce the population by 90% but it’s a good start for them. And this may be just step 1 or it’s already at step 7 of a 17 point plan. Who knows? There is so much we sheeple do not know about the ‘real elites’, their plans for us and how they will achieve it but achieve it they are determined to do.
The Green Mob and the Ministry of Truth.
Even if nothing climate-related is changing or will change, they are slowly rewriting history, making new myths and changing society. Where and when does it stop. Nobody knows.
Human society prospered by learning from history, expanding the use of inventions/new technology that worked (not the ones that didn’t), through science revealing “truth” and abandoning myth. The Mob is taking us backwards on all of that just because of some theory that doesn’t work.
Another of my fears is the destruction of science in many fields ,not just climate, and taking decades to unsnarl it.
A little ice age.
I like Polywell Fusion.
My biggest fear is “opportunity cost”, all those funds spent on climate politi…, sorry, scientists, could have been used to (potentially) save many thousands of lives doing useful research.
I don’t fear climate change, I fear the brainwashing of our children. A student of mine said the other day :” we’re going to run out of oil by 2050.” Another said: “The polar bears are dying because of the North Pole melting.” Whe asked, they said they heard it from their “science” teachers.
Liz: I think you’re quite right. A young relative of mine (aged about 9 or 10 at the time) was set some homework.
He was asked to ‘devise a low carbon breakfast’!
Lest you wonder, I sent a very pointed letter to his headmistress with some basic biochemistry explained. We need to challenge this sort of nonsense whenever it is peddled.
I am happy to report my kids are being told the truth and to challenge their indoctrinated teachers. They mock the entire premise. Good kids!
The reduced levels of civilisation that will be enjoyed by my children, grandchildren etc.
MY main fear is that we might expend large amounts of time on wasted thoughts, analysing faulty statistics, writing responses, taking part in arguments that lose friends – all for nothing. Or have we already done that.
My worst fear is that nothing changes regarding the issues raised this report and that the EPA et al will continue unabated making rules and regulations that breaks the bank.
Senate Minority report from mid 2014: “The Chain of Environmental Command: How a club of billionaires and their foundations control the environmental movement and Obama’s EPA”. It is an eye opener, at least it was for me. Ever felt like a puppet? I did after reading this.
http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAc…
My greatest fear is that, by treaty, scare-mongering, or otherwise, governments will, in vain attempts to contain or reverse global warming, deny access to cheap and plentiful carbon-based energy to developing countries, thereby keeping billions of people in poverty unnecessarily, including all the health problems that result from indoor burning of biomass. The supposed cure is far worse than the alleged problem.
My greatest ‘fear’ of:
Global Warming- The devastating, and useless, economic impact.
Climate Change- It will get cold.
My fear is the collection of REAL reasons for this alarmist scaremongering. The lies are less subtle, and more frequent, preposterous and blatant now, in the teeth of good contradictory evidence to disprove them, yet still the warmists persist.
THAT’s the scary thing.
Well, some individuals have a deluxe cabin in the anthropogenic climate titanic. Although it may guarantee a seat in the life-boat, understandable panic is spreading at this stage. This is of course sad for those directly concerned. For all the rest this is a blessing: a more intellectual fear could have lasted a life-time.
In line with the above statements…Which has caused more hardship and suffering for the human race over the last 100 years, man-made climate change or politicians and leaders with ‘noble causes’? Well it isn’t even close, is it? Man-made climate change over the last 100 years is not even discernible, while the blood-soaked pages of our political history make up an ever-increasing library of shame and horror!
I don’t worry about climate change. I worry about the people who worry about climate change!
“I don’t worry about climate change. I worry about the people who worry about climate change”. I wish I wrote that. The only tipping point I worry about is an economic one. We cannot maintain a strong military without a strong industrial economy. When we had a weak military in the past, bad things happened.
+1
– education pollution
– denuded ridge lines of futile, expensive, non-productive, radioactive waste pit, whirligigs
– energy poverty
– MSM
– rape of developing countries’ resources
– more evangelical politics
– scientific reduction
more, I’m sure, plus what you said
I think this is a very good idea for broad distribution, but it would be best to confront a big list of supposed things to fear – I think a crowd-sourced list and discussion would be perfect. People are supposed to fear all the elements of extreme weather (put up the data on worst storms, floods, droughts and when they happened), encroachment of tropical diseases on the temperate zone (the Rideau canal builders in eastern Ontario, just after the war of 1812, died in numbers for malaria and yellow fever), failure of crops with increasing CO2 itself plus the warmth its supposed to cause (bumper crops around the world, the greening of the Sahel, tree growth, plants more drought proof because elevated CO2 reduces evapotranpiration) , disappearance of the ice (stopped, polar bears thriving – 3200 of them found in the Kara Sea where they hadn’t been seen before, NW passage frozen shut last year and thick ice in the strait right now, Antarctic ice new satellite era record extent each year, lost penguins found in abundance).
A good idea to talk about the pause. Also to list and give a brief account of the debunked global warming cause of the death of golden toads and other creatures (scientists infected frogs and toads – caused world decline in amphibians because of unhygienic sampling of populations looking for hormones for pregnancy tests! Probably saving on rubber gloves). Sloppy studies of butterflies because of lack of understanding of their habitat – the checkerspot doing just fine…..Yeah, I think a readable book or booklet. Include all the quotes about no more snow, no more ice, fires, droughts, extinctions….
My main fears are broader:
-Too much acceptance of “authority”
-Too little questioning
-Not enough Nullius In Verba
If politically-motivated activists confirm that science can be manipulated to attain Machiavellian aims, science will be forever compromised.
John W. Garrett
Yes! I stand with you on this.
My greatest fear resulting from the global warming scare is that the reputation of science will be seriously damaged by the pseudoscience promoting the scare.
Richard
The reality of much science is money-motivated prostitution. The reputation of science is higher than reality and must drop. That is anguishing.
On that topic, to me the scary thing ? It is history repeating it self and we’ll end up in the dark ages all over again.
John, you say your main fear is that “… science will be forever compromised.”
That has been my fear for many years. Government funded “science” done by “consensus” where the “consensus” is driven by political means has damaged the very idea of science.
We have even gone so far now that some skeptic sites will not permit certain skeptical viewpoints to be mentioned in the threads. We must at least pay lip-service to the magical molecule CO2 and “back-radiation” to be part of the “cool kids”.
We know that the “data” has been manipulated until it is darn near useless in many ways. We know that basic laws of thermodynamics have been ignored repeatedly in this drive to demonize CO2.
The entire Jim Hansen theory of how the climate works is bogus. He was doing politics from the very beginning. If a person finds he believes anything Hansen has said, then he needs to closely re-examine that part of his understanding.
“We have nothing to fear but fear itself,”
I’d have thought antibiotic resistance is probably more of a threat to humanity than climate change. If governments had spent the amount of many they’ve wasted on climate change instead on healthcare, new research on bacterial and viral infections the world would be a better place?
It should be a punishable crime to use an antibiotic when it is not needed.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.”
“The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.”
“The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
– H.L. Mencken
Hypothesis:
1. The next act of this farce will be characterized by global cooling starting by about 2020 or sooner, cooling that may be mild or severe. Global cooling will demonstrate that climate sensitivity to increasing atmospheric CO2 is so small as to be insignificant. The scientific credibility of the warmist gang will be shattered and some may face lawsuits and/or go to jail.
2. The scientific community will gradually accept the fact that CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales, and that temperature (among other factors) drives atmospheric CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature.
3. The foolish green energy schemes to “stop global warming” will be shelved and dismantled, but not before they contribute to a significant increase in Excess Winter Mortality, especially in Europe and to a lesser extent in North America, where energy costs are much lower (thanks to shale fracking).
4. The warmist thugs will still be bleating about a warmer world, wilder weather, etc., all caused by the sins of mankind, but nobody will listen.
Regards to all, Allan
I wish I could share your optimism. But with many Trillions of dollars, pound, and euros on the line, I can’t see th e Green Blob going away quietly.
Maybe we can shift their efforts to productive ones. There are REAL threats.
My current favorite book is “Cows Save the Planet” by Judith D Schwartz. Most greenies should love it and it has a little warmist nonsense in it, but its recommendations are constructive instead of harmful.
In general people may not believe in global warming. The problem is the leaders in government who are listening to “qualified people” (NASA for instance) and “every scientific organization on the planet” (warrenlb) that supports global warming by co2. No matter what happens, CAGW isn’t about to change their tune. Have you seen anywhere where they address the issue of the LIA or the MWP? * Zero, zip, do da, nothing.. a non event. Have you seen them address the origin of co2? Nope, zero, do da, nothing. For years they claimed the LIA and MWP were local and not world wide. A world wide drilling program laid that to rest. Not only world wide but many other events as well. They shouted loud and clear that they could tell from the ratio of co2 isotopes where co2 came from. Now it comes out that they can’t. Hence the satellite they launched shows a very disturbing amounts in the southern hemisphere. (After all they’ve made a big deal at 0.01 increase in temps) And if the data continues to be against AGW, that’ll be the last time you see any public information on that.
Kids will grow up believing it’s warmer even if it is much colder because they have nothing to compare it to, and the warming is happening somewhere else, not where you are. “And abnormal cold that’s allowed under CAGW because that’s weather and not climate. “…
* They could possibly come up with dozens of reasons for the LIA and not change their chart showing the relationship between co2 and temp. The MWP on the other hand is going to be next to impossible. One explanation for the LIA is going to make it that much harder to explain the MWP, The entire AGW theory falls apart there. Volcanoes made it colder and co2 levels were flat, then the MWP (warmer than the CWP) the co2 levels were flat?? What made it warmer if temps follow co2 levels and the IPCC chart shows level temps and co2 levels? First the chart is wrong on temps, and second if they adjust the co2 levels to correspond to the change in temps, then they have to address where or how the co2 levels changed. They are, scientifically speaking, in deep do-do.
What I think I see unfolding is the steady disappearance of the middle class. I heard on the news that the “ruling class” gathered in Davos with two main items to discuss – climate change and world-wide wealth disparities. As for the first item, my guess is that they will discuss just how they can get new tax streams on-line and how they can profit from getting in the flow of that money stream. As for the second item, what are the chances that the people who flew in on private jets will agree that they should share their money with the world’s poor? Rather, they will discuss how they will be the “good guys” and help us in the middle class share our wealth with the world’s poor. I’m afraid that the last seventy years or so have been an anomaly, and not something that will be sustained, much less grow. The middle class is seen by the ruling class not as something to protect and foster, but as a cash cow. The end result appears to be much more wealth equality – except for the people in Davos who wish to rule the world.
This is why, even though this site is so popular, fighting this movement is probably fruitless. There is too much money involved. As a lawyer once said to me (in a camp at a high mountain lake in the Brooks Range when he temporarily let his guard down), it’s easier to take money from someone than it is to make it.
My biggest fear is that the massive wanton and wilful damage done to the world’s economy by the Green/Left will bring about exactly the disaster that they claimed climate would do.
A self-fulfilling prophecy, I believe it’s called.
“The only thing to fear is fear itself”
It is the fear of “climate change” and what people will do because of that fear that is of most concern.
Government funding damages most organized human activities when applied to areas which are traditionally **not** the domain of the state — and now we know how government funding is ruining science. Big Science administrators (those responsible for raising money to fund their research groups) have found that the real money comes from censoring the scientific media and launching publicity campaigns to promote alarming points of view in the popular media. Actual research is of secondary importance and may even be counterproductive because, from their point of view, it could lead to unwelcome new discoveries.
What really disturbs me is how naturally these anti-scientific developments follow from the need to spend lots of money to perform large-scale experiments which are connected to complicated theories or computer models that only a few insiders really understand. It will be hard to prevent institutionalized science from turning into a new and oppressive form of religion…
I don’t have any
My concern is that the lies of the Climate Liars will win out over truth.
Living in northern Illinois and growing increasingly elderly, my greatest fear is cold and governmental policies that give me reason to fear the cold. Looking at all the evidence, I’m convinced we are approaching another downturn in temperatures and the CAGW crowd has convinced government knotheads that we ought throw out existing energy generation before reliable replacements are in place. Last winter was a warning that we should be increasing, not decreasing, our energy production capabilities. I’m also convinced the whole
CAGW hypothesis is nothing but a ruse for seizing control of energy, imposing a one-world government and, ultimately, massive culling of humanity. CAGW advocates are truly dangerous people and I fear, not for myself, but for my grandchildren
I totally agree..my fear is what would happen if the greenies get their way and close down fossil fuel and rely on solar and wind.
What worries me ? The SMOD (Sweet Meteor Of Death)
Social progressivism embraces CAGW alarmism merely because it offers a means to an end. Whether they succeed or not depends on maintenance of a state of ignorance in the public to their energy and economic control schemes, of which the grand deceptions embodied by the IPCC reports and UNFCCC agreements are central.
A continued state of ignorance of the public toward climate change deceptions will be severely threatened if global temps remain flat. Even worse for the UNFCCC lie is if temps begin to head downward before the next IPCC can attempt a further coverup of the a glaring AGW failure. This fact underscores the Socialist Progressives recent, very aggreesive attempts to force economically destructive aCO2 emissions, to get out in front of a coming, all too likely natural cooling of global temps, in order to maintain a cause-effect lie.
Toward these deceptive means, several outcomes will be predictably necessary.
1. shutdown recording of the continuous Mauna Loa CO2 readings. Defunding of this government-run, very visible falsification of CO2- temp linkage seems likely.
2. Elimination of, or gross manipulation of, the coming OCO-2 satellite data, which if proceeds, threatens to severely undermines man’s fossil fueled CO2 emissions as a significant source of the observed CO2 rise in #1 above.
3. Even more aggressive manipulations of surface temperature datasets to maintain an appearance of “global warming” until a Climate change covention can be imposed on western economies.
It’s the reason I’m obsessed with the topic. I fear that governments around the world will pass draconian regulations that will impede human progress to an unacceptable level causing all sorts of world-wide unpleasantness. And they will do this based on flagrant propaganda.
Actual downside to a warmer world? There should be more floods.
I’d say sea level rise except that as pointed out, it’s been happening right along and human activity will cope with it.
Floods come from agricultural mismanagement. Read “Cows Save the Planet” to understand how and read up on Italy’s Arno River for a repair case example.
“What are Your Fears about Global Warming and Climate Change?”
1). That IF it turns out to be a net negative that we’ll discover it’s indeed NOT caused by man leaving man without control. If mom nature wants to make it a bad thing, there is not a darn thing we can do about it.
2) Man will waste inordinate amounts of money on the right “mitigations” for the wrong problem costing improved standards of living and peoples lives.
3) Folks will continue to self polarize while blaming the other side. Politics is a tough sport, but it can be “gentlemenly”.
At 6:31 AM on 30 January, Danny Thomas asserts:
Like hell.
Politics – in the sense that it is concerned with getting and keeping control of governments – is entirely a matter of exercising the police power in civil society, the ability of coherent factions to perpetrate “legal murder” in commanding and controlling the lives, liberties, and property of other people.
Find me the taxpayer under I.R.S. audit who considers the extortion he’s suffering to be a matter of “sport.”
Tucci78,
I did say it CAN be, but it’s not always. There are extremes in all circumstance (IE Climate debate) but there are mutually beneficial compromise positions which can be excluded in addressing “climate” issues. Things such as land use (urban planning, no till,) and the like can have alternative societal benefits and meet the needs of all sides. If we stake out postions of “there’s nothing we can do” to improve our society, sure it leads to polarization. But that’s an extreme position and it’s the extemes which lead to vitriol to the benefit of none. This was the intention behind my point.
We chose to play the game where we play it (in the US) and therefore either accept the rules (IRS) or work to change them. Our entire constitution is a set of rules. It’s the approach to which I’m referring.
At 9:16 AM on 30 January, Danny Thomas responds:
Yet again and always, like hell.
You fail to appreciate the fact that “Politics” is ever and always – from the level of the municipal dog catcher and tax assessor to that of the Indonesian illegal immigrant presently infesting the Oval Office, a matter of armed deadly coercion, “Politics” being undertaken for no purpose other than to determine who controls the effective monopoly on “legal” violence in American – and most Western – societies. “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”
How is it that anyone can presume that “Politics” – and therefore government control, always undertaken at gunpoint – is the route through which “societal benefits” (however in hell THOSE are supposed to be defined!) can or should be legitimately or even viably pursued?
It must be appreciated – in this forum more emphatically than anywhere else on the Web – that the conceits critiqued by sound students of purposeful human action (e.g., Dr. Thomas Sowell in his The Vision of the Anointed [1996]) regarding “experts” and “authorities” cock-crowing their “settled science” from the dungheaps of their politically-funded Cargo Cult science have never been anything but elaborate maskirovka in a principally left-“Progressive” campaign being waged against the individual human rights of innocent people.
There is no benign purpose behind these activities, no “noble cause corruption,” as this corruption has never in even the remotest way had anything “noble” as to its perpetrators’ motivations.
There is certainly much that “we” can do to improve “society” (that nebulous abstraction which cannot be treated as a concrete entity without consequences fatal to right reason and a lucid appreciation of reality, not to mention the fates of the people who engage in that “society” for the sake of their very lives – not to mention the lives of their children), but however in hell d’you conjure that aggressive normative government thuggery can serve in that improvement?
Has government a legitimate purpose in the “society” you’re discussing?
Sure. By maintaining a credible threat of deadly retaliation against those freelance criminals who violate the individual rights of the folks participating in that “society.”
I’m a physician. I tend to analogize the immune system when I think about government. T-cells and neutrophils and macrophages.
But brain tissue? Hardly!
And when the “immune system” of “society” goes out from under control, not only failing in its functions but co-opting resources from the body which can and will result in death (the analogy is to leukemia and lymphoma), government becomes a disease, itself threatening “society” and the people involved therein with catastrophe far more genuine and imminent than any “climate crisis” you or any of these preposterous progtard jackwad warmists could ever conceive.
Tucci78,
Been traveling so not able to respond till now.
First, can you cut back on the strawman approaches to this discussion?
Example: ” “climate crisis” you or any of these preposterous progtard jackwad warmists could ever conceive.” Do NOT presume to KNOW what I think. You would be seriously mistaken. I am here to learn, bounce ideas off others, get alternative perspectives SPECIFICALLY because I do not perceive a “climate crisis”. I cannot be more clear.
Out of “gentlemenly” respect, I chose to leave the previous strawman w/r/t the IRS and some fictitous “audit”. For all I know that could be your strking out due to some personal negative transaction with the IRS. But an “audit” has nothing to do with politics. Now, having written that, the delay of so 501c3’s ………..But these are off topic.
“How is it that anyone can presume that “Politics” – and therefore government control, always undertaken at gunpoint” is well off the mark unless by chance you’re incarcerated. Keep in mind, that in the US, and I presume this conversation is still about the US, you have every right to relocate should you so desire. It is a choice to remain. I chose to remain and do all that I can as an individual to modify that which I’m capable of modifying should circumsatances not be what I beleive to be in the best interest of our country.
There is much needing correction with our politcial workings. But going back to my previous post, our constitution is a set of rules. If we’re to improve our circumstance, we chose to accept those rules as a foundation and proceed from there. One can take to combat if one chooses but as a matter or course diplomacy first and violence last. Ever heard “speak softly” (I will not insult you by continuing the quote as I’ll accept and respect your education and intelligence).
“Has government a legitimate purpose in the “society” you’re discussing?”
I’ll state that renewables should be persued but only if the playing field is level. And for the reason that FF will not last forever. I see good reason for the 4th estate (and that includes sites such as this) is needed for oversight. Further scientific research is needed, but should any with a “skeptical” track record wish to be “in the game” funding should be available. No resources that do not fit “mutually beneficial” (urban planning, no till practices, and the like) should be funded “at this time”. EPA’s mission creep should be evaluated via bipartisan review. I do not trust (having lived thru the 60’s and 70’s) states to be left in charge of pollution control as my incoming river becomes another’s waste disposal system. So, my answer is yes. As you responed “sure” to this self asked same question, I perceive common ground (with the exception of approach).
Reasonable folks can make reasonable compromise.
At 5:20 PM on 31 January there was Danny Thomas observing that
…while thought-blocking on the pikestaff plain fact that these preposterous progtard jackwad warmists have proven themselves thoroughly to be no goddam kind of “Reasonable folks” willing to engage in lucid argument aimed at getting to either an honest appreciation of factual reality or any kind of “compromise” other than the sort that has their opposition agreeing to take half a beakerful of supersaturated potassium cyanide solution rather than the 500 cc they’d originally tried to force upon each of ’em.
And there’s nothing of the “straw man” fallacy in that post to which Danny Thomas had belatedly replied. Were that so, Danny Thomas would have been able to show same. He simply didn’t read what I’d posted.
My point is that these caterwauling climate catastrophe bastids – those, at least, who are not simply Gruber-qualified flaming ignoramuses readily panicked and herded by such con artists – are politically motivated to conjure up and ram down the blatant bogosity of “man-made global climate change,” their motives having nothing to do with either benign intent or genuine concern with the good of the human race.
They’re out for their own purposes and benefits, and the overlay with left-“Progressive” authoritarianism in its socialist guise is uniform. They’re all “Liberal” fascisti, and they’re all in it to advance the cause of statism in the violation of individual human rights.
And also to get personal wealth, perqs, and power along the way, of course. Let us never lose focus on the Algore.
Ain’t nothing “gentlemanly” about those diseased sons of jackals except the mannerisms they adopt while gulling their victims, and Danny Thomas should wipe the … stuff … out’n his eyes to see those enemies of the human race for precisely the pack of predatory bastids they’ve always been.
The great gaudy “global warming” – er, “global climate change” – crapfest has never been anything BUT “politics,” with the agency of civil government being employed by the alarmists as their vehicle of choice for riding roughshod over the lives, liberties, and property of innocent people.
Now and always.
Now, make a “straw man” outta that.
Tucci78,
So do I understand correctly? Your approach is to be exactly that which you rail against? By being an ANTI “caterwauling climate catastrophe bastids”. You double down by posting ad homs (“They’re all “Liberal” fascisti”, “those diseased sons of jackals”) in wide group format (lucidly to your credit) entirely lacking of substance but inclusive of juvenille name calling.
“Reasonable folks can make reasonable compromise.” My quote from earlier. Inherent in that quote is that at least one could be reasonable. And, being presumably well educated as a “Doktor” and all I mistakenly presumed you’d have the capability of being that one reasonable one. My mistake.
Lacking evidence to the contrary, this tree is the wrong one for me to “bark up”. At least the reasonable folks in the room can have a reasonable discussion. Energy spent here evidently would be better spent elsewhere.
Have a great day!
At 11:04 AM on 2 February, Danny Thomas fails (predictably!) to understand that the expression argumentum ad hominem is NOT a pretentious Latinate synonym for “insult,” posting:
…but rather denotes a specific type of logical fallacy in which “an attack on the man” is substituted for clear description or reasoned argument.
On the other hand, calling these “caterwauling climate catastrophe bastids” what they are – uncomplimentary though it is – can only be taken as an emphatic stress upon what those lying, grasping, domineering sons of dogs have proven themselves repeatedly to be. As for Liberal Fascism, if the diagnostic criteria are met, MAKE THE GODDAM DIAGNOSIS and to hell with them.
Heck, calling them “Progressives” seems oncologically appropriate. In clinical medicine, we speak of a cancer as “progressive” if it continues or resume growing in bulk and spread after a treatment protocol – surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, immunotherapy, whatever is included in the “best practices” regimen – has been completed.
This, of course, means that the malignancy is “progressing” and will kill the patient.
We’re not particularly polite in our consideration of cancers as “noble cause corruption” opponents. Nor is the average human being especially polite in his response to freelance home invaders, street muggers, rapists and extortionists, as long as said victim has effective means of deterrence and retaliation in hand.
Whyever in hell should any honest man reading here treat political progtard “climate catastrophe bastids” as anything but the thieving, extortionate, lying, vicious enemies of social comity, good civil order, and individual human rights they ever-so-goddam-truly keep showing themselves to be?
Tucci78,
Good doctor. Once again you (predictably) lack any substantive discussion and “resort” to the attacks “to the man” in lieu. Then, feel some need to feebly attempt to deride my understanding of the term ad hom when in fact it’s quite simple. As your words indicate your use of the ad hom “is substituted for clear description or reasoned argument.” Clearly, this type of approach is utilized when substance is unavailble (or by choice which it even worse to the viewer).
Do you truely feel the need to continue to justify your “less than gentlemanly” behavior? If your goal is to prove how “low” the side against whom you’re “arguing”, then is stooping to such tactics the best approach? Double down and call them “cancer”? Even in your choice of description of an insult as opposed to an ad hom, how does this strengthen any supposed argument you’re (not) offering?
In no way have or am I suggesting you compromise on your principles. My attempt is to suggest you hold up a mirror and see if you’re not actully done that yourself. Or, and I’d find this to be more derogatory, if your principles are already under compromise as (using your preferred description) you’re ‘only’ insulting and not making an ad hom. Self evaluation might be appropriate here. Either way,it matters not to me how proud you wish to make you parentage.
Lacking any forthcoming substance from yourself, I’ll leave it to you. Again, wishing you the best of the rest of the day.
At 6:21 PM on 1 February, either confused (if one is interested in treating him charitably) or duplicitous (if one acknowledges the behavioral markers honestly), Danny Thomas evades the point that in a thread where the Ur-topic is fear about the great anthropogenic global warming pretense – an arrant fraud as all and sundry reading here know (even the vicious lying little weasels supporting the premise in the face of all evidence contrary thereto) he and I have made the subject of our particular exchange the excoriation of Danny Thomas‘ priggish blather about treating politely with those superbly well-demonstrated politically motivated leftist – are they still calling ’em “progressives” now, or might we revert to “socialist’ and “communist” and “fascist,” for all most assuredly apply to these “Watermelon” enemies of the human race? Y’know, “green on the outside but red to the core!” – thieves, liars, charlatans, quacks, embezzlers, extortionists, profiteers, hypocrites, grafters, pimps, molesters of children and the elderly, and generally posturing, bloated frauds.
Danny Thomas wants to make nice with these critters on some sort of idiot presumption that they’re reasonable human beings and entitled to tender treatment, whereas I’m for calling criminality – however perfumed and privileged – just precisely what the hell it is, and treating the perpetrators and advocates thereof as public enemies, to be regarded at all times and everywhere (at least figuratively) as were the James boys, the Younger brothers and their associates when they rode into Northfield, Minnesota, on 7 September 1876.
The principles of justice derive from a reasoned appreciation of the facts of events in human affairs, and the political left in these United States (indeed, all over the world) have for decades fastened upon the pretense of “science” in which the great horror of “Man-Made Global Climate Change” (friggin’ ridiculous ab ovo and ever-more-obviously demonstrated to be specious down to the present day) to leverage this fraud as a vehicle for “cork-screwing, back-stabbing, and dirty dealing” in the lives of innocent people ever since.
The political left is execrable, their motives vicious, their tactics invididious, their effects destructive, their purposes damnable. In the great gaudy “Global Warming” scare, we’ve seen all that of them and more. Does Danny Thomas deny this?
Might as well say call ’em what they are, and treat the bastids accordingly, whenever and wherever they show.
Think of it as an obligatory public health measure, like killing rats.
Tucci78,
But you see, “they’re” not rats. “They’re” humans. “They’re” neighbors, friends, brothers, sisters, aunts, fathers, and so on. GET IT? Fellow human beings.
So, yes, damn me if you will for my preference to chose to treat fellow humans as …………..humans! Shocking, I know.
I don’t wish to censor you in any way. That’s not up to me and I wouldn’t if I had that capability. In fact, I want your ability to speak freely. It’s kinda a “right” where I live and follks have fought and died for that right. I wish you’d realize about whom you’re speaking. There’s some sort of “golden rule” out there that I prefer to have in the world in which I live. The world in which you chose to live is a world of your making. Maybe you’re too “educated” to learn and understand that. Either way, it’s a choice YOU make. I choose differently than that which you offer. No biggie.
The “last word” I leave to you.
Once again, have a great day.
At 11:50 AM on 2 February, of the “man-made global climate change” fraudsters in particular (and, doubtless, left-“Liberal” fascisti in general, which set reliably and all but uniformly overlaps with the vicious bastids pushing the AGW hoo-raw), Danny Thomas writes:
Of course. Rats, after all, are innocent vermin with no capacity for morality.
You kill them nevertheless.
These progtard friggin’ liars, con-artists, strong-arm thugs, thieves and predators must be considered to have full capacity for criminal mens rea, and are therefore knowing and willfully plotting and acting against the lives, liberties, and property of innocent people.
What must a society – any society – offer the innocent, the law-abiding, the helpless, in the way of protection to preserve them from such enemy action?
At the very least, we can discern the criminality, speak to the prevalence thereof, and condemn it.
A pretense of kindly politeness is not only friggin’ ridiculous but it’s a clear dereliction of the citizen’s duty.
D. Thomas,
I’ve only lurked this long exchange, but I want to make a point. You say:
…“they’re” not rats. “They’re” humans. “They’re” neighbors, friends, brothers, sisters, aunts, fathers, and so on. GET IT? Fellow human beings.
You sound like RACook, and me, and lots of other skeptics. But your conclusions are wrong.
It is a proven fact that the use of cheap fossil fuels like coal are the most certain way to help the poor. There are no exceptions. When energy is cheap economies grow, and when economies grow everyone benefits — the poor most of all, since they finally have some assurance of enough to eat, and food takes a smaller bite out of their very small income.
When governments cause the cost of electricity to skyrocket, as they have just about everywhere, the poor get whacked, and whacked hard. They are literally starved to death in many cases. I could go on, but the fact is that cheap energy is the best way to help them, and to protect the environment. Compare the environment in any rich country with a poor country. The more wealthy a country, the better it’s environment is. No exceptions.
Everything else you read, and everything counter to that fact, is pablum. Coal, as produced in modern plants, meets all regulatory emission requirements. It does not pollute any more than any other power source, with the possible exception of nuclear. And it typically costs well under 10¢ per kwh for retail customers, compared with 25¢+, where windmills and other ‘alternative’ energy sources must be subsidized.
If that alone does not push you off the fence and make you an anti-green, then nothing will. Either you have their interests at heart as you claim, or you’re just another hypocrite wringing your hands over “the poor”. If you were one of them, it would be a no-brainer. It is for almost all of us here.
Have a great day. Eat well.
DB,
Thank you. I’d really like to be able to talk specifics with you as I think we have more common ground than you’ve previously been willing to see. Once we reach a level of mutal respect, I think we can actually communicate.
To your point, I don’t think you’ve ever seen me be anti FF. If so, please point it out as I’d like to correct it.
I’m light green. Why do I define myself that way? I’m not against FF at all. I see no need (at this time, subject to change based on receipt of future evidence) to not rely on the currently most economically and widely available energy source we have available world wide. I’m for alternative energy research and exploration as FF won’t last forever. I’m not convinced CO2 is an issue, but it has my radar up as a candidate to keep evaluating. I see warming and have concern that we’re not prepared for “yesterday’s weather” as Steven Mosher suggests (that makes great sense to me), and unitl we’re prepared for that why worry about what “might” (or might not) happen in the future. I think we need to improve urban planning. I’m for no-till for numerous reasons we can discuss if you’d like. Coal, I’m waffling on. It creates other pollutions that cause me concern, and frankly when a mountaintop is removed it’s ugly. It’s a land use thingy. Wind farms are ugly and kill animules. Solar is ugly. I don’t have answers to all of those and the obvious alternative energy desire vs. praticality.
I live about 150 miles from one of many large nuke plants that has had zero problems since beginning constuction in 1975. I can think of two nuke issues and one was related to an earthquake and the other was management. I’m willing to spend a bit more for my energy, but I’m not poor. I’d frankly be willing to subsidise (details, details, details?) by my paying a bit more so “poor” can move up in their standard of living. I’m a believer that technology will improve all of our living standards until it doesn’t (that whole AI thingy makes me wonder but that’s a long way off–I hope)
Just so ya know, I drive a one ton diesel dually pick up!
Let’s talk, and not throw barbs. Can we agree and bury the hatchet?
I don’t know answers. I’m truly here to learn and I don’t know how else to prove that other than to continue to stick around. I’ve learned and broadened my horizons just by sticking around. I don’t agree with all, but do agree with some. I feel that good discussion and good communication cannot be obtained without effort. Hopefully I’m showing you my effort. I’m modded consistently and hope that’ll end someday. I can’t see how my comments are more inflamatory than “some others” but so be it.
Work with me?
Why is it that this post reminds me of the joke: 6% scientist are Republicans. Scientists trying to understand why that number is so high.
Pippen Fool, that is an idiotic joke, even for you.
A pic of Pippen Fool’s 6%…
…surrounded by PK’s fellow True Believers.
The sad history of the German chemist and physicist unions in the 1930’s shows all to well how scientists are easily politicized for both reputation and profit.
From:
http://cen.acs.org/articles/91/i37/Chemistry-Nazi-Germany.html
Progressive science is today in action under the guise of the consensus rhetoric, silencing internal critics and squashing any “non-compliant research from publication wherever it can. No one should think that today’s “consensus” scientists are much removed from that seen in the 1930’s opportunism in the German science academies.
Very good Joel. One of the toughest arguments a warmest gives is their disbelief that many scientist would lie or do bad things. To show good examples of where they have is very helpful in trying to persuade a warmist.
Furthermore, If one cannot see the anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism that exists in the current US President, one is simply closing his/her eyes to reality. Scary shades of 1930’s happening here and in Europe.
Pippen have you ever actually met any hard scientists? Like mathematicians, chemists, geologists? There seems a direct relationship – the harder the science: the more conservative the scientists. So there’s an easy answer to your ‘joke’ – there aren’t enough soft ‘sciences’ like climastrology and ‘social science’ to make scientists look like total idiots, but there are still far too many.
What really scares Bob?
Bob real fears are that:
(1) Climate scientists will become more certain of a future filled with proportionately more pain and suffering,
(2) Climate science will find that human-induced global warming will continue to be the major component of total global warming,
(3) Climate scientists will come closer to understanding that the natural contribution to global warming will be a very minor component to future global warming and climate change, and
(4) Climate science will take several decades-centuries-millennia to convince Bob that the climate science contrarian mindset is abject groupthink.
You mean that in a millenium or so they will come up with a model that actually predicts something?
Point 1 is about the beliefs of other people. It has nothing to do with the real world. And why should anyone object to their freedom of religion?
Point 2 is obviously wrong about the warming from 1850 to 1950 as the emissions from man were so small then. There is no warming from 2000 to now so there is nothing to continue being the fault of sinful man. So how can we continue to be in the second half of the last century? It makes no sense.
Point 3, climate scientists will find that absorption effects of gases do not decline logarithmically? Not in this universe. And as natural effects are dominant so far this century this point is actually refuted (over any timescale that requires extra expenditure on adaptation, at least).
Point 4 Maybe? But a priori reasoning (that is that, you are right because you say so, so there! Now go to your room) is not actually conclusive. It’s also unpersuasive.
Why come here just to say “I’m right. You’re wrong” without any evidence?
First, the damage done to the lives of the poor before the climate house of cards falls under its own weight.
Second, the damage done to the reputation of real science. This may be the worse result since two generations of kids have already been snookered and, once they realize it, support for any kind of science will be dead for decades (hopefully not loonger).
My main fear is that people – such as ‘you lot’ at WUWT – may start to think that all science done within academia is at the same level as climate science, and thus may come to distrust anything that any scientist says. That’s why I think it’s important that scientists should speak up about climate science, and reassure people that most university science is good solid (though usually not groundbreaking) work.
Another worry that’s been in the news recently is the really nasty witch-hunts by the activist thugs, against people like Matt Ridley and Willie Soon.
This exactly Paul Matthews. When it is promoted endlessly that most scientists support a catastrophic view of the climate (which they don’t) and the catastrophe doesn’t materialize… science is tarnished. And yes we have the Pippen Kools and ICUs anonymous ready to serve their ‘king’ and rid him of those troublesome priests.
They are opportunity thieves.
Liberty is the primary factor in the creation of the largest middle class in history. The discovery of carbon based fuels and the ability to distribute and utilize them is the foundation for our improved health and lifestyles. Faux environmentalists utilize the excuse to undermine economic freedoms individuals need to improve their own lives and ultimately the state of humanity. It is in the process of stealing opportunity away from our and future generations to come. They hide behind the mask of “greater good” leveraging ignorance to force their beliefs upon the individual. They exhibit their hypocrisy by standing upon the dais built from carbon based products and spouting their anti oil rhetoric. They deny individuals pursuit of happiness in order to appease their warped sense of justice and their need for external affirmation on their beliefs. When they don’t get voluntary affirmation, they need to force it because we “aren’t as brilliant as they are”. If it was just a bunch of eggheads drumming up excuses for funding, I probably wouldn’t give two hoots. But the extension of the false menace into most politicians insatiable desire for our money and activists need to rule what they can’t achieve through the paths provided by liberty represent the most significant threat to everybody’s freedoms.
My fear is they will destabilize the energy supply and infrastructure in America and destroy our industry and jobs.
You can’t run a semiconductor plant or any high tech manufacturing with intermittent electricity or expensive fuels and feed-stocks.
Free trade already did most of this.
I fear the impact on our young people of those who dismiss Scientists and the Institutions of Science as ‘incompetent’, ‘fraudulent’ , or ‘in a conspiracy’ to defraud the public, while making their own absurd claims that they are akin to a ‘Galileo’ or ‘Einstein’ ….misunderstood, under appreciated, or even unjustly smeared for proclaiming their nonsense.
Will we be raising a generation of Science Deniers if such views of Science infiltrate our schools?
The best antidote is to challenge such views at every turn. Or perhaps more simply, ask them to publish so we can see their gibberish exposed to critical examination by Scientists engaged in the research. Of course, we see very little of their dissembling submitted to peer review, because they know it can’t pass muster.
warren- give us an example of what you call science de(nial). Just one example will do.
@warrenlb:
Give us just one example of one of a professional society’s polling of its rank-and-file members, asking them:
Are human emissions the primary cause of global warming? Yes / No (circle one)
Oh. You don’t have any examples? I can’t find any, either.
So it’s A-OK for warrenlb’s cronies to presume to speak for the 99.7% who are never given a say in the matter? How is that credible?
Also, it seems the Einstein analogy really stings warrenlb. When 100 members of the Russian Academy of Sciences signed an open letter to Albert Einstein stating that his Theory of Relativity was scientific nonsense, Einstein replied that it didn’t take 100 scientists, but only one fact.
They did not have a single credible fact that withstood scrutiny. Same with warrenlb and his ilk. Their entire global warming scare is based on vague assertions, shoddy science, appeals to ignorance, and — mostly — on piles of easy money.
Alarmists have no credible facts. They have been 100.0% wrong in every scary prediction they ever made. Planet Earth is making fools of them and their bogus conjecture, and as year after year passes without the predicted runaway global warming, their arguments devolve into anti-science. How is that not exactly the same as the Einstein analogy?
warrenlb has never had any credible arguments. Everything he posts is a product of hisTrue Belief. Confirmation bias rules him. He will never submit an article here for publication, because he knows that everything he writes is bunkum. Instead, he personally attacks people who do write articles; the ad hominem fallacy and the Appeal to Authority fallacies are all he’s got. Take those away, and warrenlb gots nothin’.
Finally, going by the time stamps in warrenlb’s comments, he doesn’t have a productive job, either. It must be nice being able to post comments all throughout the work day, Monday thru Friday — unless his paid job is posting his discredited alarmist nonsense. Either one may well be the case; my mind is open on the matter. Why is it that the tiny handful of wild-eyed alarmists posting here all seem to have being unemployed, or cheating their employers, in common?
@ warren
Yea, Einstein did some good work, the morons at climate science aren’t. Still following the talking points of AGW I see. Combining or comparing AGW to real science. Did they hand out those again in the hopeless attempt to revive the hysteria on climate change? Are you hoping that the number of people who didn’t know and didn’t care aren’t going to remember the horrific predictions that didn’t happen? You’re probably busy right now making up a new list… for 2030 or 2050… ??? Is that the new time frame now. ?
Science Deniers indeed!!! Did you miss the fact that co2 levels have increased, and the temps well, didn’t?? Critical examination is always necessary. By the way, everything I’ve asked has been done. The satellite that measures co2. The drilling that was done that confirmed both the LIA and the MWP. Accurately measuring the so called rotten ice in Antarctic, which turned out to be 3 to 5 times thicker than the IPCC thought, and many others. All that’s left is for the IPCC to answer how since co2 and temps were both level during those time periods to explain it….. You can’t pass muster, that’s the bottom line. It’s the IPCC’s chart and evidence, it’s the IPCC’s predictions, all wrong.
You’re not talking to a bunch of uninformed or uneducated people here.
“You’re not talking to a bunch of uninformed or uneducated people here.”
No, but when such educated people accuse the PhD scientists of ALL the World’s Institutions of Science of being morons, it seems their accusing finger should be directed towards themselves.
Then answer me: Explain the the MWP in terms of co2 and temps.
warrenlb,
I fear that there are too many people like you, who no little about Science and don’t understand the Scientific Method, are trying to dictate what is taught in schools from a position of ignorance or political belief system.
Sorry, Science and Engineering Technology is my profession, and I want to see the highest quality of science teaching in our schools.
Intelligent Design, ‘Man is not Warming the Planet in spite of what all the World’s Institutions of Science find’ ‘, ‘Earth is 9000 years old’ — are all in the same bucket of anti Science garbage. I say keep them out of our schools.
Those endorsements were lobbied for by warmists. Critical, informed, unbiased thinking was not employed. Those institutions asked for volunteers to join a committee to write a position statement on AGW. The volunteers were nearly all alarmists–the examples of the APS and GSA are type-cases. No “red team” was appointed.
Finally the APS has appointed skeptics to its latest committee, and the Australian geological society has listened to its membership, and things are changing.
You want published here’e published for you.”Why models run hot: results from an irreducibly simple climate model”, by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, Willie Soon, David Legates and Matt Briggs
That the focus on dubious “carbon pollution” will distract from real and ongoing environmental impacts. It is clear this is already the case in terms of research framing and regulatory focus. Mitigation strategies are given an environmental free-pass.
My Fears ?
The way in which indoctrination (brain washing) has been applied for 20 years and more to children growing up in the western world in relation to ‘climate change’ and left-wing politics – and how that will be developed and used politically in the future
The change in political structures being created by the scare and what is intended to be created; the erosion of democracy as a result – Global Government by the unelected, initially on environmental matters ; and that this will end badly as people eventually see the light and seek to recover democracy
The way in which food and land are turned over to bio-fuels on the whim of green activists – ostensibly to save the poorest people on earth from ‘climate change’ but in reality forcing them to starve to death as millions each year are now doing ……
The elevation of NGO green pressure groups to parity with policy makers and advisers – in the EU they are now funded to ‘advise’ and develop policy for the EU, the UN does likewise and my fear is how national and global legislation is being or will be made on the whims of green activists with a very narrow and often deeply unpleasant hidden agenda.
The growth in politicians’ minds that the electorate are incapable – despite vast knowledge resources available to them – of making the ‘Correct’ decision and that decisions must be made outside of democratic accountibility (EU structure for policy making) – again that there will be a very unpleasant backlash to this at some point when people realise they are no longer in functioning democracies
The growth of left-wing socialist and marxist ideology underlying the ‘green’ agenda and the way in which so much of mainstream media and particularly publicly-funded broadcasters (BBC and ABC etc) are active propagandists for all things of the left. I fear they have forgotten, or never learned, that the worst atrocities commited on mankind (Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot) have all been done in the name of socialism, marxism amidst the control-freakery of left-wing thinking.
The destruction of honesty and probity in certain areas of science – notably climate change – and the growth of the political doctrine of Post Modern Science that encourages scientists to hide or distort results and even to lie about them if it is in a ‘good’ political cause. I fear science will take a long time to recover from this evil philosophy.
Finally I fear that those who have been the greatest perpetrators and promotors of the ‘global warming’ scam will not be held to account and will not be punished.
+++ 🙂
A very good summation of our current situation, Old England. Since we transitioned from “the next ice age” in the 70s (caused by soot or particulates of burning stuff) to global warming with little damage to anyone’s reputation, I am pretty sure there will no punishment for those who caused so much economic harm. Berni Maddoff swindeled a few rich people and he gets life in prison. My father told me about 40 years ago that the doomsday people have always been around but no one believed them when he was young. One of the things he remembers was the fear that the electricity flowing in the tranmission lines that were springing up across the country would get into the corn and then we would be eating it in our corn flakes.
Ron White said ” you can’t fix stupid”. I think he is right.
All that new CO2, I fear having to cut my grass more often.
Mrs Git cuts ours, so that is not a fear I share 😉
My main fear is the damage to science education, understanding and institutions.
Science education (in the UK at least) has been hijacked to promote the belief in CAGW. To do this it has had to deprive a generation or more of the ability to ask “Why?” Science is now about evaluating sources and recognising the correct authority: “Why does every Academy disagree with you and your thermometers?” That doesn’t lead us closer tot the truth. It let’s the truth be what yesterday’s winners say it is.
Science understanding is a requirement in a technological democracy. People need to be able to say “that doesn’t sound right” and thus affect or at least object to policy. Would you trust a democracy where no-one knows your history, foundations and fought for liberties? Of course not. Democracy with no shared historical understanding can’t debate it’s future. But we aren’t just a culture of art and literature. we are also a culture of gadgets and concepts. W need a scientifically literate populace who can debate. But any debate is now ridiculed as “pseudoscience and shilling”. Thus the national infrastructure is exploited by anyone after the main chance; no-one in power can tell a scam when the # hear it and no-one can force the fools out.
Science institutions are the repository of our accumulated wealth of knowledge. They defend the scientific method from abuses by gathering the champions of the method in one academia. They propel the implications of new discoveries into the public sphere by being the point of contact for the media. And they have found the simple narrative of “we’re all going to die” very easy to communicate.
So they lost nuance. And then the lost balance. And now they have become what they were meant to prevent. Lobbyists in white coats. “And now the Science bit” may sound persuasive but is persuasive the same as honest? “Defending the Orthodoxy” is a the phrase the GWPF use. It is accurate and the opposite of “Interested in Truth”
That is my fear of CAGW. They are all fears for society not the physical world.
Because the physical impacts of AGW are unclear and indiscernible from what happens anyway.
But the cultural impacts are great.
Great comment. Forget my original answer, I’m switching to yours.
Well, your comment was like mine but in less verbose bullet points.
Brevity is far more readable, after all.
My fear is that the remedies for global warming weaken the technologically advanced societies so much that we are unable to respond to the real problems that will come up.
My fear is increased energy poverty for the poor via energy policy created from modeled opinion based faux science.
I fear the impact on our young people of those without portfolio that dismiss Scientists and the Institutions of Science as ‘corrupt’, ‘fraudulent’, or ‘in a conspiracy to defraud the public’, while nominating themselves as Galileo or Einstein.
I suggest the remedy is for them to submit their writings to a peer-reviewed Scientific Journal. Since there’s nothing from them in the literature, they must conclude their ‘research’ could never pass critique by Scientists working in the field.
Who chooses the “editors” and who chooses the “unknown review team” of anonymous star-chambers of judges who rule the careers and budgets of EVERY government-paid so-called “scientist” who gets paid a Big-Government salary from unknown Bog Government bureaucrats distributing Big-Government money ONLY to those who publish the desired Big-Government policy papers?
You worship at the “pure” untarnished white marble tomb of the “scientists” and their anonymous unbiased judges in the official “peer-reviewed” paper industry. Just like the original Olympic sponsors and their modern equals who worship the pure, marble-white vision of untainted amateur “collegiate” athletes only “playing for the love of the sport.”
In 100,000 person stadiums for teams of 24 coaches who earn $4,000,000.00 per year for 12 games of football that last only 60 minutes each. In front of 60 million TV viewers each weekend.
But no, “peer-reviewed papers” from Big Government-paid writers are the only “Truth” in your world.
Your post fits the bill rather closely.
warrenlb
Your reply to RACookPE1978 xsays in total
No, the bill is presented to all of us in the form of the destruction of science and its replacement by the pseudoscience you support.
Richard
warrenlb has only claimed to be afraid that people don’t blindly follow scientific pronouncements, rather than being the least worried about subversion of proper scientific method in support of political agenda.
warrenlb: You say ‘I suggest the remedy is for them to submit their writings to a peer-reviewed Scientific Journal. Since there’s nothing from them in the literature, they must conclude their ‘research’ could never pass critique by Scientists working in the field.’
This is a standard issue ‘warmist argument’.
Here in the UK, if you’re going to get a paper published, you’ll need for example a first (Bachelor) degree in a relevant subject. Then a course of study for a research degree – perhaps initially a Master’s, then a Ph.D. You’re going to have to get a placing somewhere – your interests and views will have to be broadly in line with the department or organisation that’s funding you. Then, if you find something interesting in the course of your work, you might, with your project supervisor, write up your findings and submit them to a journal of your choice. Such a paper may well be rejected – so then you shop around until you find a journal that will publish it, if you’re lucky.
None of this means that your work is necessarily going to stand the test of time. It’ll be open to challenge – and that’s what happens in blogs like this. You have all sorts of people discussing the issue – physicists, engineers, statisticians, biologists, geologists and many more – many of whom have experience relevant to the CO2/ climate story, but are not going to be able to get their views published because of the way the system of peer review (some call it ‘pal review’) works.
Their arguments are laid out on this and other websites very clearly. Why not challenge them with your own data?
Why not challenge them with your own data?
Because warrenlb has no credible data. He really has no data at all. But what he has, he uses constantly: ad hominem attacks and his ever present appeal to authority fallacy.
Take those logical fallacies away, and he’s got nothin’.
My biggest fear? After blowing trillions of dollars to no effect, we’ll find we’re still not warming and I’ll continue to see winters with average snowfalls of +95″ and a couple months with average high temps kissing 0°C.
The diffefrence between me and a “climate scientist”? I can look out the window and see the bitterly cold reality for what it is … cold.
That should be difference …
It must be a sad existence led by those incapable of looking out the window; or going out into the garden every day even.
Mr. Tisdale lists as his first concern:
I’ll go along with that, but I’m a helluva lot more concerned with the fact that these “activist” catastrophe-caterwauling quacks and goons have effectively destroyed sound scientific method in meteorology, “climatology,” and all allied disciplines ranging through geology, oceanography, etc.
What we have right now in the vaunted “peer-reviewed literature” throughout the hard sciences are the effects of unsupported (and unsupportable) assertions as to the nature of physical reality having been taken as reliable evidence underpinning conclusions and recommendations for amelioration. That is unspeakably pernicious, and anyone who has ever participated in new investigatory work (or, indeed, who has simply written a review article for publication) knows that the foundation of all inquiry is a review of the existing literature.
Well, if that’s “tainted,” just where the hell d’you think that subsequent work is going to go?
We’ve seen this in clinical medicine forever, particularly as pharmaceuticals and devices manufacturers produce (and then pick-and-choose among) the “peer-reviewed literature” to gain promotional leverage in the advertisement of their products, or – more invidiously – to minimize prescribers’ appreciation of those products adverse effects (wiki up “rofecoxib” sometime), so any physician worth a tongue depressor would tend to be highly skeptical of the preposterous catastrophism among “the climate consensus” charlatans pretending to be le dernier cri in the physical sciences.
Hell, we’re taught to recognize quackery, and we have a professional responsibility to do so.
Therefore no one reading here should ever lose focus upon the pernicious effects of this “climate consensus” quackery – all of it politically motivated by the left-“Liberals,” mind you! Utterly damnable! – in degrading the investigatory and critical methodology which had made of the sciences a hitherto-reliable “bullshit detector,” and has enabled the grasping progtard sons of bitches in governments all over the world to suppress the error-checking mechanism in those same sciences and thereby foist upon the general public a program of legal plunder” on a scale that beggars belief.
The real question is when to do quacks recognize their own quackery? I see the Dunning-Krueger effect on full display .
warrenlb- I see your endless string of logical fallacies as nothing more than hateful propaganda. Yes, I used the words hateful and propaganda. I am fully aware of the hundreds of thousands of premature deaths around the world which are due to implementation of policies designed for just that purpose, but wrapped in the green camouflage cover of saving the world from climate catastrophe.
My biggest fear is going out in public….
..according to this survey, half the people I run into out there are total F’in loons
Indeed…
My fears don’t even rise to the level of concern, but if I were concerned, my concern would be for those who are “concerned”, that they might become overly concerned and thus concern themselves with others’ business, which would turn them into meddlers, meddling in other people’s lives to such an extent that their concerned meddling would trigger the exact type of response which should really cause them concern. But then, some can only learn things the hard way, so that might be what it takes for the “concerned” to finally figure it out, which would make the world a better place, so no worries.
Overpopulation, leading to catastrophic famine and global war.
Population will keep rising for as long as we keep so many nations in poverty, it will stabilise or even fall slightly once everyone is reasonably rich. This would normally be no problem, as we have many decades.
But the AGW true believers and their associated NGOs are blocking economic growth, so I fear people in much of the world will get poorer rather than richer, leading eventually to unsustainable population levels and appalling violence.
“… as long as we keep so many nations in poverty…”
———————
Who are you calling “we”?
Are they not the same elites who promote and profit from the most dangerous idea that mankind has ever faced, the notion that too many human beings exist?
Thanks for asking, Bill. Like others, it’s not the climate I’m afraid of, but the people.
They induce a sense of fin de siècle for The Enlightenment (in the Anglophone countries, at least). The dawning of the age of stupid and the bastardization of scientific method in the service of “green” politics.
The question “what is it you fear?” is an excellent one, but I think that many of the comments here miss the mark. I think that the real fear of those who fear climate change goes something like this: “When people significantly alter the natural environment, the results are bad. The larger the area affected, the worse it is. So altering the global environment is really terrible.” The first two statements are not irrational, given history that those of us who are baby boomers (and older) remember first hand. The error lies in drawing a universal conclusion from a number of particular cases.
Once you have acquired the above fear, all of the disasters claimed to result from global warming are readily accepted as the inevitable consequences of messing with Mother Nature. The details really don’t matter, so you will make no headway arguing with alarmists over them. If you actually want to change minds, you need to address the underlying fear.
One way of doing that might be to point out the various ways in which warming and more CO2 is beneficial. That is, if you can get an alarmist to listen long enough. Good luck with that.
Perhaps a way in might be to point out that a corollary of the argument in quotes above is that the Earth was in an optimum state before humans arrived on the scene and screwed everything up. Then ask the alarmist to explain why we should believe that.
Not that I actually know. To date I have succeeded in changing exactly one mind on this subject. Mine.
Very good Mike M. I thought I made a mistake once, but I was wrong.
My fear is to see a repeat of the 7 years I saw of the Food to Biofuels initiatives. I was in Latin America, and I saw a lot, a LOT of poor people in 3rd world countries either starve to death, become desperate turning to crime, and I saw the Poor and Middle class families get hammered by skyrocketing food prices, all because 1st world climate activists wanted to drive their cars without guilt. I saw families unjustly deprived of low cost energy that could heat and cook their food, keep their medicine from deteriorating, and money that could’ve been saved and spent on basics, like sanitation and clean water, get spent on f–king solar panels to run CFL bulbs. I saw hectares of land taken from poor people and turned into “Carbon Credits”, monocultures of eucalyptus trees (which sucks massive amounts of water out of the soil) just so Climate Activists could look “green”. I saw food prices shoot up by 200% in 1 week. And who can forget one of the primary mottos of the Arab Spring, about bread?
http://i.guim.co.uk/static/w-620/h–/q-95/sys-images/Observer/Columnist/Columnists/2011/7/13/1310570494405/bread-helmet-007.jpg
Do you think Climate Activists and the IPCC will apologize for the death and destruction that their policies pushed? Oh F–K no. The day I give any idea of respect to the IPCC or to Climate Activists is the day I see every one of those goddamn scientists go to every single poor family in every single 3rd world nation, get on their knees, and apologize with, “I’m sorry you lost your loved one from starvation so that our 1st world activists could drive their cars without guilt.”
Till then, I reserve my right to SPIT on every single climate activist I see. They are truly my enemies.
[“image” html tags removed so link will process. .mod]
And for any climate activists who are reading this, because from my experience interacting with your ilk, almost none of you have ever done volunteer work with the poor, for your reference, here’s the IPCC 2007 recommendation.
Climate Change 2007: Working Group II: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability
And here’s what happened next.
Biofuels Might Hold Back Progress Combating Climate Change
FAO report links high food prices to biofuel demand
“This week crowds of hungry demonstrators in Haiti stormed the presidential palace in the capital, Port-au-Prince, in protests over food prices. And a crisis gripped the Philippines as massive queues formed to buy rice from government stocks.
There have been riots in Niger, Senegal, Cameroon and Burkina Faso and protests in Mauritania, Ivory Coast, Egypt and Morocco. Mexico has had “tortilla riots” and, in Yemen, children have marched to draw attention to their hunger.
The global price of wheat has risen by 130 per cent in the past year. Rice has rocketed by 74 per cent in the same period.”
The other global crisis: rush to biofuels is driving up price of food
I had to watch and experience this on a personal, and visceral level when I sojourned Latin America. This is what I fear the most from “Climate Change.” Not the climate change itself, it’s the god awful, inhumane policies these activists and scientists push. To this day, I still want to kick the crap out of every Climate Activist or Scientist I see.
Thank You, SAB!
At 8:26 AM and with further explanation at 9:28 AM on 30 January, SABicyclist does a superb job of keeping us mindful of the hideous perversity that is the leftard “Watermelon” ‘viro movement’s direct and indirect attacks upon the lives and general well-being of the poorest of the poor, in the already-racked and ruined Third World particularly, all in the name of “sustainable” practices such as the diversion of grain crops into the manufacture of fuel ethanol.
Hm. It’s apparent from a Web sweep that the “progressive” leftards still don’t understand the significance of that “bread helmet guy” (one of many) appearing so strikingly during the Tahrir Square protests in 2011.
The cereal grains provide the bulk of daily calorie uptake in the Middle East and the Arabic-speaking world generally. Bread is a symbol to these people, and the “bread helmet” is a symbol that the leftard “Liberals” neither understand nor want to understand. Raise the prices of food enough in these marginal (at best) economies, and the lower class – faced with real starvation – as well as the middle class (who see their quality of life going to hell as they’re forced to spend more and more of their disposable income on food) are going to move against the government upon which they depend for the “regulation” of their economy.
The whole “Arab Spring” process basically began as food riots.
And all for the collective good: man does that sound like a familiar refrain…
http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2010/02/the-legacy-of-mao-zedong-is-mass-murder
Sorry, Bob. I was also agreeing with a comment by Bill.
My greatest fear is government rat-hole projects enforced by blinded zealots.
I have noticed with interest that our usual pro-AGW visitors have *** nothing *** to say about the OP’s questions. I would be interested to know what their fears were (I can predict what some of the talking points would be). Would they accept authoritarian control of their lives in return for some assurance by the “scientists” that all would be well climate-wise?
Do I read your comment correctly? That your rejection of the conclusions of all the world’s Institutions of Science are driven by your fear of imagined solutions, rather than the Science itself?
warrenlb, You quite obviously made pretense of a lack of reading comprehension in order to make another personal attack, as well as committing other logical fallacies. Personal attacks, thin logic and lies… no wonder you remain anonymous.
Fair question – you should remember that the science of climate is not an all or nothing proposition. There are in fact many principles and conclusions we all agree on. What I reject are the manic pronouncements by certain science zealots (and many less knowledgeable lay persons/activists) that if we don’t do X, Y, and Z then our climate will be “destroyed”. We humans don’t have that power.
No, the rejections are driven by 35 years of failed predictions.
Do you place your trust, standard of living, and future in Tarot cards? They are as good as climate science theories so far at this point.
@warrenlb:
Oh, not that nonsense again. warrenlb is a one-trick pony. He has no credible facts. He has no corroborating data. He has no empirical observations to support his mindless position. All he ever emits is the ‘appeal to authority’ fallacy.
What a naive individual. Prof Richard Lindzen states unequivocally that a handful of enviro-activists has corrupted the institutions warrenlb refers to, and Lindzen names names. [see Sec. 2]. But warrenlb assumes that the simple majority of the boards of those groups cannot be corrupted.
I’ve served on executive boards before, and I can state for a fact that it is easy peasy to get them to adopt positions inimical to their charters. All it really takes is one individual willing to make friends and trade votes.
The corruption of professional bodies has been a deliberate process, and very effective. But people like Lindzen easily see through it. Only the credulous like warrenlb presume that it doesn’t happen. Which as we see, works on the clueless. <—[lookin' at you, warren]
You see, above I presented a peer reviewed paper, if you regularly read WUWT you know about it. One of the authors ,Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, routinely got criticized for not publishing, however what he did instead was to quote directly from work published by others. Skeptics can do that because the published works tend not to actually support the notion of dangerous global warming do to increased CO2. The belief that most published paper support the idea dangerous global warming is based on dubious claims like the 97% claim that has been destroyed by WUWT nine ways to Sunday.If you want to educate yourself look it up.
Now there a few alarmist papers out there that are just wrong, a those have been refuted and yes the counter arguments have been published.
There are a wide range of threats to our future which rank higher in my mind than the risks of climate change. This reflects concerns also expressed in surveys which due to their immediacy have a much higher ranking and relatively high probability – eg: terrorism, jobs, food supply, clean water, nuclear threats, war, economy, epidemics, environmental degradation etc. There are also a number of lower probability but potentially very high impact events – asteroid strike, tsunami, volcano etc.
Risk of climate change is far less of a concern as it will impact largely beyond current lifetimes and at a pace which could be substantially mitigated through adaptation strategies. If other threats materialise within climate change timescales (50 – 100 years) then it may become somewhat academic anyway.
This is not to suggest that many of the changes that the alarmists are imposing are futile – minimising use of fossil fuels and developing alternative technologies to generate power and increase efficiency makes very good sense environmentally, economically, and reduces long term vulnerability.
A simple objective analysis of threat, associated risk and potential impacts discounted (in some way) for time may demonstrate that expenditure directly and indirectly attributed to climate change could be much better targeted.
–
The fearful amounts of money spent on this through wind turbines etc and the lining of peoples pockets.
The fact the UK is the only country with the CCA.
No dissent is allowed, because of crass statements like ‘the science is settled.’
I fear that decades of mis-allocation of public resources have not addressed the true threats to our society’s survival: nuclear war, massive solar flares, and truly unsustainable government spending.
If solar scientists are right, we might just not see another massive solar flare for the next half century or more.
Science liberated me when I was young. I was naturally drawn to it. It became my belief that the rational analysis of the natural world had elevated the human race at an accelerating rate in the past several centuries, and would continue to do so.
Now, it seems that the practice of science has been bastardized into another political tool. Given my background and accomplishments, I am always amazed when some guy in a tye-dyed tee shirt on the street corner who couldn’t take the derivative of x with respect to x lectures me about “what the science says.”
My greatest fear is the squandering of this fantastic tool, and the human race pulling back into a fearful luddite existence in order to satisfy the dolts and the politicians.
The phrase I’ve used for some time is – science prostituted to politics.
What has driven this country to what it is today, IMHO, is a combination of incompetence and greed. These terms pretty much cover everything. We are seeing these two patterns playing out today with climate science.
The next time someone lectures you about “what the science says” – ask them just what the science actually consists of that shows man made CO2 to be a significant factor in any current warming. If their belief is strong, either it is a belief based on some knowledge of the science behind the claims, or it is just another religious belief. I can pretty much guarantee you that they will not know that “the science” consists of people sitting in front of computers playing SimEarth. And that those people are using optimization to arrive at “sensitivity factors” to amplify the known effects of CO2 on temperature. And that the wide range of these “sensitivity factors” makes it evident that the physics is far from being “known.” *Every time* they use the historical data to “verify” their models, that historical data becomes less and less out-of-sample. How many times have the models been “verified” since the late 80s? It is clearly an exercise in curve-fitting. Many of us are well aware of how ridiculous this is when done to make projections in a coupled, non-linear chaotic system (as defined by the IPCC). The emperor truly has no clothes.
What scares me? That the environmental benefits of higher CO2 levels are either 1) not studied, or worse 2) thrown out due to political inconvenience.
#2 it is
#1 – http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/reportarch.php
My fears are that:
1) The already cold climate in Canada will get colder, making food production more difficult
2) Alarmists will [successfully] introduce [crippling] carbon tax that will destroy the economy of Alberta (much like Trudeau did in the late 1970s and early 1980s)
I`m with you Jeff, Our Ontario premiere is hell bent on dragging our economy further into the economic hole by continuing Dalton McGinty`s incompetence and blessing us with a Carbon Tax and Cap`n Trade!
God help us.
Washington State USA as well…
I too remember the NEP (National Energy Program) of LaLonde and Trudeau. From 487 rigs actively drilling for oil to less than 150 in under than a year. A carbon tax will do much worse to a lot more people.
It seems B.C is doing quite well with their carbon tax. Last time I checked, their economic growth rate exceeded Canada’s average.
Bob Tisdale in his WUWT lead post asks, “What are Your Fears about Global Warming and Climate Change?”.
I have no new fears due to the start and evolution of the Climate Change / Global Warming movement in the past ~40 years.
I have no new fears specific to Climate Change/ Global Warming because the movement is just another of the endless playing outs of the ~2,500 year old main intellectual issue of all of Western Civilization. That main intellectual issue for ~2,500 years for Western Civilization is the fundamental intellectual debate / dispute over individual versus collective. That basic intellectual debate / dispute will always confront every new generation of human beings and I don’t fear it. I relish the intellectual dispute and it is glorious to pursue.
No Fear
John
I view the ‘2500 year old intellectual issue’ as the forces of darkness being driven out of the public sphere by the Enlightenment and the demonstrable results of the Scientific Process, i.e., our modern way of life. Now we see a smattering of regression by those who cannot accept the conclusions of Science that as long as Man burns fossil fuels the Climate will continue to warm. Perhaps because it upsets their worldview, or perhaps because they imagine disastrous solutions, or perhaps they imagine a takeover by some amorphous ‘threat’ to their way of life, while ignoring the real threats to their grandchildren.
I relish seeing how evidence and the Scientific process always wins.
But that would mean your side loses.
Go and tell that to the worldwide poor who starved and lost loved ones in the last seven years from the IPCC policies that your “scientists” advocated and pushed for with claims that their “science” supports to solve a “problem” that their “science” claims to support.
Every
Single
One.
I DARE YOU.
You want to claim scientific legitimacy?! Then BE F–KING ACCOUNTABLE TO THE CONSEQUENCES OF WHAT YOU’VE ADVOCATED.
Not much chance. So far it’s peer-reviewed Science 99.9 to 1: jamespowell.org
Oh, that’s rich, warrenlb, your link goes to a Bill Maher episode… that’s sciencey, for sure.
You did let slip a bit of truth though, when you answered “not much chance”…to SABicyclist’s injunction for you to be accountable for your advocacy of policies which have lead to miserable consequences for many of mankind’s less fortunate.
LOL It’s called the Scientific Method, not the “Scientific Process”.
Quite funny that you make disparaging stereotypes of those who actually have understanding of Science and the Scientific Method, when you demonstrate a complete ignorance of it.
To sum up and answer the question: I fear people ignorant people like you, who want to return to the Dark Ages of belief.
Warren the hiatus proves beyond reasonable doubt that carbon dioxide is innocent of the charges laid against it, which leaves us with a huge psychological mess.
So many people have been brainwashed into accepting the AGW theory and when temperatures begin to slide in a few years the effect on groupthink will be extraordinary.
Mass delusion is terrible to behold, thankfully its only a first world problem.
wlb: “Now we see a smattering of regression by those who cannot accept the conclusions of Science that as long as Man burns fossil fuels the Climate will continue to warm.”
You must have missed this…..if after reading you have data to refute come back and present.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/28/global-warming-is-still-on-the-great-shelf/
Re James Powell:
Too bad he wasn’t specific about how much warmer it would be in 2014, because I suspect he had in mind a much greater rise than has occurred. The divergence between IGPOCC’s projections and the actual record is what has risen, not the temperature.
=================
Here are my comments on a survey by James Powell, posted online in various sites last year (2011?), of 13,950 papers dealing with climate change. It analyzed their abstracts and “found” that only 24 rejected manmade global warming. I posted the following critical comments on the site below (not the main place it was posted). I suspect it was this survey that inspired what Cook is up to now (5/2013):
http://oilprice.com/The-Environment/Global-Warming/Contrary-to-Popular-Belief-Scientists-are-United-on-Climate-Change.html
The article states:
How many papers that “explicitly state that the theory of global warming is false” would get by peer review with that phrase intact? How many would even be submitted to peer review if they included that phrase? They therefore tend to be more circumspect and merely cite a discrepancy, some flaw (minor perhaps only in the author of this article’s opinion), etc.
Here’s a link to 1100+ peer-reviewed papers supporting skeptical arguments critical of ACC/AGW alarmism:
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html
========
Strawman. The claim is not that skeptics are 100% “prevented” from being published, but that that it is difficult (and hence rare) to get them published, or to get them published without being watered down, as I hinted above.
==========
IOW, an article will be classified as skeptical only if it presents hard evidence. BUT an article will be counted accepting/endorsing even if it presents no hard evidence, but merely implicit opinion:
Denial must be explicit, but acceptance may be implicit. This double standard biases the results of this article. By how much is unknown. For that, the author should have indicated how many fall into the “implicitly accepting” category.
==========
But the weakness of the warmist case isn’t in the “hard evidence” so much as in the inferences drawn from that evidence, the selectivity applied in deciding which evidence is the most relevant, the inferences drawn from those relevant bits of evidence, the assumptions made, etc. It is at those matters where the main thrust of skepticism has been directed.
But journals want to publish “findings.” This biases them against publishing wide-ranging, argumentative critiques. (To be fair, they rarely publish similar argumentative essays from the warmist side either.) They have a just-the-facts attitude. But the facts don’t speak for themselves. Argumentation has therefore moved to other venues.
What’s needed is an online venue where viewpoints can be argued among credentialed scientists, with the peanut gallery roped off into a separate section where their comments won’t disrupt the discussion, but can be drawn upon by the participants if desired. (Seen but not heard, IOW.) This is what has finally gotten underway with the establishment this month of the Climate Dialogue site, at http://www.climatedialogue.org/
==========
So what? (Irrelevant thesis.) Skeptics don’t deny that. What they deny is that this warming will continue at its current pace; that it would be very harmful if it did so—or even harmful on balance at all; and that there are amplifying factors that will accelerate the current trend. The alarmists’ case rests on the assumptions of strong positive feedbacks and the absence or weakness of negative feedbacks. That’s where their case is weakest.
Hmm . . . There’s nothing in that list by the following skeptical scientists, at least half of whom have presumably published papers properly classified as skeptical:
Syun-Ichi Akasofu, Claude Allègre, John Christy, David Douglass, Don Easterbrook, William M. Gray, Richard Lindzen, Nils-Axel Mörner, Fred Singer, and Roy Spencer.
I took their names from Wikipedia’s “List of [35] scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming
Here are four other names, half of whom I presume wrote articles that were missed: Zbigniew Jaworowski, Augusto Mangini, Nathan Paldor, and Richard Tol.
It might already be too late and that should be, but oviously is not, the concern of the science denying souls. Science is loaded with mechanisms for checking, rechecking and verifying the experiments and work of others. That’s how it works, that’s how man has progressed technologically.
At 2:43 PM on 1 February, we have p. Clahane speaking to
…in vituperative condemnation of scrupulously scientific critics ever-so-effectively debunking CO2-demonizing quacks and Gruberoids pushing the proposterous bogosity of “man-made global climate change” as he goes on to blather:
Egad. Not only reification of an abstract (“Science,” as if “it” had flesh and blood and halitosis), but also thought-blocking on all of human thought and artifice prior to the development of scientific method as if no culture had ever “progressed technologically in all the millennia hitherto (big news to Clovis man, eh? not to mention the city fathers of Ur and Thebes).
Be warned that turning the spigot on this kind of yutz’s personal fund of knowledge wouldn’t moisten your windshield wiper.
warrenlb
What caused the Enlightenment in Western Civilization? It was the Renaissance in Western Civilization. What caused the Renaissance? It was the reintroduction of Ancient Greek and early Roman knowledge that was sequestered from light by the ‘total society’ authorities in power during the late Roman, Dark and Medieval Ages. Science is just one of humankind’s manifold uses of applied reasoning. It was the reintroduction of the basis of applied reasoning from circa 2,500 years ago that has enabled our modern freedom of individuals to pursue unrestricted applied reasoning where such individual applied reasoning cannot be thwarted by any efforts of a collective of men trying to claim a self-presumed authority on applied reasoning. The only authority on applied reasoning is objectively observed reality.
Climate focus: What we are seeing is significant applied reasoning by separately acting independent individuals on climate who show that the as observed climate is intrinsically and unambiguously inconsistent with your position that “the conclusions of Science that as long as Man burns fossil fuels the Climate will continue to warm”. We are seeing the triumph of independent and open applied reasoning (science) by that. I RELISH IT.
John
My main fear is that we will loose freedom and prosperity. Also that all science will become tainted as corrupt.
AGW alarmism is the greatest moral dilemma of our time. I fear that the next generation of children will need to undergo major decontamination to irradiate the stain of AGW brainwashing they have been subjected to. I have this uncomfortable feeling that when I have discussions with the next generation that I am undergoing some sort of early dimensia as evidenced by my climate change skeptism. The more I yell at them and say I can’t believe that they are so gullible the more that I get looked at as if I’m the one who’s mad. My biggest fear is that the warmists will win and inflict on the world a global genicide of a magnitude never seen before. They will send our world back to the dark ages. Human advancement will stop or reverse and a global green elite will control our lives as they control our minds.
If you fear that the global green elite will inflict mass genocide, then you must’ve been living under a rock to not notice what the IPCC Food to Biofuel initiative did to the poor world wide, and that was in the LAST SEVEN YEARS (2007-2014).
A lot of people starved from that god awful policy initiative. And some of us never forgot who started it, and who f–king pushed for it. The IPCC and the Climate Activists may think they can wash their hands now, but Karma’s a bitch.
The sad thing is that the narrative is not directed at the 40+. It is the brainwashing of the younger generations in knowledge that the aged generation won’t be around to offer any calibration to the past. The up and coming generations will have nothing to compare and accept that it “has always been this way.” The UN will succeed, using the AGW crisis of opportunity to build the NWO and mechanisms of depopulation. The question is can they sustain it? Human nature has already provided the answer in historical context. How pitiful and delusional are the High Priests of this movement, to think that social engineering will recode human nature.
Your fears are not unfounded David because it has happened before. I like to ponder some as to how much better the world would be today if it had not taken those steps backwards in the dark ages.
My biggest fear is of the people who are being stampeded by the cAGW fear narrative, they are trampling me in their irrationality. Fear narratives are very effective in causing people to stampede in the directions that profits the stampeder, like green energy businessmen, carbon traders, carbon taxers, politician saviors, scientist grant seekers etc etc. The cAGW fear narrative has way more profiteers than even the fear narrative of Sadam`s weapons of mass destruction, that narrative only profited the arms industry and other merchants of death.
My fear: The cooling comes, and everybody thinks its also caused by co2.
1) Science is for sale to the highest bidder. This is not just a problem with climate but it is very obvious in that field. The endless “making your research socially relevant” (to quote Dr Brown) in the pursuit of grants and funding is matched only by the “what result do you want” being the first question scientists are now asking.
2) We will have pissed away so much time and money on global warming that when our little inter-glacial is over we will not be ready and have limited funds to adjust to a colder, drier world. This will be fatal for a lot of people and it’s completely needless.
“1.activist climate scientists and agenda-driven politicians who fund climate science have tainted all related fields with unjustifiable certainty of a future filled with pain and suffering,”
1.activist climate scientists and agenda-driven politicians who are doing their best to ensure a future filled with pain and suffering,
There, fixed.
1.activist climate scientists and agenda-driven politicians who are doing their best to ensure that the present, and future are filled with pain and suffering.
Double fixed. Some of us never forgot what the IPCC’s policies did to starve millions and cause undue hardship to the poor and middleclass worldwide from the last 7 years.
And we will never forget.
The IPCC, a Scientific Body, set national policies that starved millions?? Really?? I thought national governments set national policy.
You must have forgotten.
Alright warrenlb, then explain why the IPCC is doing policy recommendations if they’re supposed to strictly be a “scientific” body.
Controversy over Biofuels and Land Cut from IPCC Summary
“Its previous assessment on climate change, in 2007, was widely condemned by environmentalists for giving the green light to large-scale biofuel production. ” – Telegraph
Biofuels do more harm than good, UN warns
And don’t try to weasel out of this one like I’ve seen other Climate Activists do, when they say the IPCC and CAGW is “just” about “science.” Because you can’t. The moment they started doing policy recommendations, they went way completely off the path of science and straight into the path of politics and public policy. There is no way you can disentangle yourself from politics and policy.
Here’s the IPCC document itself with the policy recommendations.
“Transport: Mandatory fuel economy, biofuel blending and CO2 standards for road transport ”
E. Policies, measures and instruments to mitigate climate change
And here.
5.4.2.3 Biofuels
Every national government used the IPCC assessment reports as a guideline for their national policy. Do you really think those of us who saw the crap that happened in third world nations with the death and starvation are that stupid? Do you honestly think we’re that naieve to think that the IPCC can play “innocent?” That all the IPCC is about is “science?”!
When every single government in the world is using the IPCC documents?
So are you going to own up for your part in the starvation? Because you and your ilk and the IPCC OWE BIG.
There’s a lot of F–KING BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS.
Correct, SAB. The IPCC is actually the UN/IPCC, a body funded by national governments. It’s remit: to find evidence that global warming is caused by human emissions.
The IPCC has failed at that. But reading all the clueless comments from warrenlb, it’s clear that their climate propaganda has found a fertile field. warrenlb’s mind has been colonized by the ‘carbon’ scare, and he twists every factoid into confirmation bias, convincing himself that CO2 is evil. In fact, CO2 is completely harmless, and it is beneficial to the biosphere.
The only thing warrenlb lacks is any scientific evidence, or corroborating data. But that’s OK, because warrenlb has something even more convincing to him: his ‘appeal to authority’ fallacy. Where would he be without it?
Global warming? I don’t have a single fear of global warming.
Climate change? I fear global cooling and the drier conditions as well as shorter growing seasons that goes along with it. I fear global cooling will lead to massive civil unrest and all that goes along with that.
I don’t really share Bob’s fears about the hijacking of science by radicals and alarmists, I’m fully confident that reality will bring these mooks back to reality.
But in the meanwhile we’ve got to put up with research like this:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL062446/abstract
So we see multiple posts starting with the proposition ‘ AGW Solutions are unacceptably harsh’ AND THEN CONCLUDING ‘AGW isn’t happening’.
This sequence of reasoning seems a bit reversed, does it not? Usually one begins with an examination of the scientific evidence, then draws conclusions about the behavior of the physical world, and only then starts to consider Policy. Might this reversed logic be a problem for some?
That’s so ‘old school.’ Today we decide on desired penalties and then conjure justification.
Oh, wait…! Wrong hat!
No, you’re taking the polarized view, with no gray.The question is not “AGW is happening.” The question is, “can we actually determine if AGW is catastrophic, or even dangerous?” This is a point I’ve had contention with many climate activists, which is does inconclusive science justify pushing socio-economically detrimental policy? If you can’t determine if this is actually a bad thing 100 years from now, then is pushing even worse things that have effects months from now justified?
And then I point out the results of 7 years of the IPCC’s Food to Biofuel policiy recommendations. Do you have any freaking clue how many poor people starved to death from that? How many poor people became even more impoverished? How many middle class folks got hammered from that? That’s seven years of goddamn hell. I got to see this crap with my own eyes in Latin America.
Does inconclusive science justify socio-economic policy that is deliberately designed to hamper the socio-economics of society? Does inconclusive science justify the starvation of millions of people? Does inconclusive science justify the destabilization of societies, from the Bread riots of the Arab Spring of 2011, to the riots all across Africa and South America? Does inconclusive science justify denying poor people a chance to live a decent life? Does inconclusive science justify destroying the lives of the middle class? Does inconclusive science justify the recently decolonized world the right to live a prosperous Western world life?
I don’t know if you can sense this, but for me, this is personal, and it pisses me the F–K off.
EVERY part of your so-called evidence, logic path, and solution SHOULD BE addressed. And is being addressed by different people at this time. You just happen to be losing the argument when you talk to anyone outside of Big Government’s cocoon of smothering good intentions and laughably bad results.
You are, as usual, assuming several things. None of which are true.
1. You are assuming that the postulated “scientific evidence” is anything but bought-and-paid-for conjectures about the far future BY bought-and-paid-for government “scientists” who are bought-and-paid-for specifically FOR their production of evidence to support the proposed solution: Control of the world’s energy production, budgets, and future BY the people who are buying the “Big Science” you believe have the correct analysis, methods, AND solution.
2. You are assuming the proposed solution has no costs to real live humans living right now. Real people, today!, are dying because of your deliberate policies.
3. You are assuming there actually is a problem with a POTENTIAL FUTURE rise in Global Averages Temperatures by 1 degree, 2 degrees, 3 degrees, or even 4 degrees.
4. You are assuming the proposed solution (Artificially and deliberately make energy less available and more expensive NOW!” will “Reduce CO2 emissions NOW! ” which will “Reduce Global Average Temperatures (in the far future. Maybe.)
WWIII caused by much of which has been mentioned above, and the likes of “warren” who follows blindly, like a lemming off the proverbial cliff of “we know what’s best for you”!!!
War, to save the world from the evil polluters like China.
“With that said, what are your fears about global warming and climate change?”
Politicians, with power over our country, who, either through ignorance, ill intent or both, support and promote the garbage of CAGW.
My biggest fear about climate change, spoken as a global warming skeptic, is that I am wrong. I worry about the kind of world my children and my grandchildren will have. I worry that people will not find solutions to humanity’s population boom and associated problems and that our planet will become uninhabitable. I worry that human beings are too stubborn to compromise and are too selfish to see a picture bigger than themselves. I have these worries, but I also have a lot of hope that we will conquer these obstacles.
I worry that people will not find solutions to humanity’s population boom and associated problems and that our planet will become uninhabitable.
Real solutions have never been found in deceit and deception. The only destination that lies down the road of good intentions, where dishonest means are frequently employed to keep the sheep herd moving to slaughter, … well we all know what that destination is.
Victoria,
You sound like a concern troll, not a skeptic.
Doubt is acceptable. We might be wrong.
And if a quick cheap fix comes along we should take it even if we don’t think it’s necessary.
The problem is that every fix suggested so far is horrendously expensive in terms of wealth and liberty.
Victoria, wrong about what? That we might live in a warmer, CO2 enriched environment with the benefits that literally brings to the table. More people die due to freezing to death than die of heat stroke. But then that is just the old folks so who gives a damn. Just started an interesting book “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels”. It has some interesting data that addresses your fear.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/elder/10474966/Energy-row-erupts-as-winter-deaths-spiral-29-per-cent-to-four-year-high-of-31000.html
My fears? A destroyed world economy; a world dictatorship that will make the USSR look benign by comparison; all resources consumed in a completely ineffectual attempt to control something that cannot be controlled – leaving us with no way to protect ourselves from the inevitable onset of the next ice age. Those windmills and solar panels aren’t going to work too well under a couple of kilometers of ice!
Great points!
That AGW is the promulgated crisis of opportunity the UN has chosen to accelerate George Herbert Walker Bush’s 1992 Earth Summit pledge, and that science has been overrun and the data so radically tampered with, it will take centuries to recover (once again) from the greed and power thirsty supranational elite brand of globalism, sponsored by those who believe themselves to be the intellectual elite of the world and are so blinded by illusion, they can’t see that it is not successfully reaching this goal, but sustaining it that does not stand up to human nature. Change is and always has been the only constant in the Universe. All the logic and sensibility we can muster won’t stop this train wreck from happening.
The socialists behind the AGW bandwagon will eventually gain full control of our nation.
Our national and international economies will be crippled by carbon taxes and hyper expensive energy.
Our fundamental freedoms as human beings will be abrogated and forced to cede to ‘the collective will’.
Independent thought will be discouraged at least and ‘re-educated’ in appropriate camps, if it persists.
And last but not least,
The ‘net’ will be controlled and blog sites like WUWT will be outlawed.
My biggest concern about climate change is that we are likely on the verge of the next ice age. They have occurred like clockwork for millions of years, and we’re overdue for the next one.
With 3C+ of warming every 100 years, not much chance of a mile of ice over NYC again.
warrenlb,
You are becoming a parody of Chicken Little.
Warren, about that 3 degrees C of warming. The scientists you have such touching faith in… How many of their many other model and predictions have been right so far? Starting with Paul Erlich in 1970 who said England would be a few islands full of starving people by the year 2000. How many have been right? In round figures?
Oh yes, in round figures… 0. So… on the basis of that, how accurate do you think your 3 degrees is?
Gads.
+1
As in all things, my worst fear is of stupid people in large groups. Never more typified in the AGW activist crowd.
I bet this IS taking place as we speak .
https://archive.org/stream/WeatherAsAForceMultiplier#page/n0/mode/1up
@Alan Robertson.
In reply to my posting of a link, You say: “Oh, that’s rich, warrenlb, your link goes to a Bill Maher episode… that’s sciencey, for sure.”
A whoops for you: Click the first tab which shows Dr Powell’s research, of which an excerpt: ‘Of 10,885 Peer-reviewed Science papers on the topic of AGW, only 2 rejected Man as the Cause.’
The 2nd tab is his bio:
Dr. James Powell holds a Ph.D. in Geochemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and served as Acting President of Oberlin, President of Franklin and Marshall College, President of Reed College, President of the Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia, and President and Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History.
President Reagan and later, President George H. W. Bush, appointed Powell to the National Science Board, where he served for 12 years.
You also say: “You did let slip a bit of truth though, when you answered “not much chance”…to SABicyclist’s injunction for you to be accountable for your advocacy of policies which have lead to miserable consequences for many of mankind’s less fortunate.”
No, that quote was not my reply to SABcyclist. It was in reply to Bruce Cobb’s post.
0 for 2, Alan.
I saw all of that crap and I also saw the Bill Maher video, which you linked. Yes, I called Powell’s work “‘Of 10,885 Peer-reviewed Science papers…” crap, which it is. He gets about as much credit as does Naomi Oreskes for her similar (propaganda) work… no credit whatsoever.
Science isn’t done by surveys. You obviously know little about Science and the Scientific Method, and are just Sound Bite Parrot.
Maybe your time would better spent educating yourself, rather than attacking rational people who are more educated than you.
warrenlb just cannot abaondon the only argument in his arsenal: his endless references to the ‘appeal to authority’ fallacy.
Get a clue, warren! You are being led by the nose — which is exactly what is intended. You’re simply too dense to see it.
@ Warrenlb:
See my reply to you upthread about Powell at:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/30/what-are-your-fears-about-global-warming-and-climate-change/#comment-1849143
warrenlb are you admitting to being a computer illiterate like James Powell?
13,950 Meaningless Search Results
http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/04/13950-meaningless-search-results.html
2,258 Meaningless Sea