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?
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.
@ur momisugly 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 Search Results
http://www.populartechnology.net/2014/01/2258-meaningless-search-results.html
Would you like an education on the how useless Powell’s nonsense is?
I truly fear that in 25 years time not a single shred of information about
the Impending Anthropogenic Global Warming Catastrophe of 2050 will be found anywhere,
and that anyone who has the unmitigated gall and appalling bad taste to bring up the
subject in public venues, will be labelled a gallumfing loon, and the Mosher mark will be tattooed
on his backside, “this end is how you up”
Amendments to the Constitution are not allowed to be removed (just overruled) so we will be reminded of mistakes we made. I suggest we not allow the wind generators to ever be removed so they can act as a reminder of how we as a society were fooled by small few, (again).
My fear is that we are too far down the AGW road to turn back. Everywhere I go, people have accepted it as fact and they are not for turning. I’m convinced that Climate Change is a fabricated first world problem created by left wing environmentalists, and although the populations of richer countries will feel the painful financial fallout from attempts to mitigate this non problem, it’s the poor in developing countries who will suffer most. Millions of people will never have the opportunity to improve their lives with abundant cheap energy and many of them will die pointlessly and in poverty.
I do not believe the people pulling the strings are environmentalists. I believe these entities have recruited Gruberites to spill their bile and support this stupidity because, well take Grubers word for it.
“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”.
http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAc…
In the good old days when the billionaires turned into do-gooders, they bought libraries or entertainment halls. The do-gooder billionaires should adopt the physicians hypocratic oath “first do no harm”.
warrenlb: Read this one? And even if you have I suspect you a Deaf, Dumb and Blind to the hypocrisy. All for the common good. Right?
Robert Bryce: Killing Wildlife in the Name of Climate Change
Robert Bryce’s recent testimony has been reprinted as “Killing Wildlife in the Name of Climate Change“. His testimony is a stark and revealing look into how government regulators and enforcement agencies are effectively turning a blind eye to massive levels of wind energy-caused avian mortality (read: dead birds – including golden eagles and other protected raptors).
Bryce’s testimony reveals how little the push for so-called green energy has to do with environmental protection and sustainability. In fact, his testimony demonstrates that the wind industry has been allowed to essentially avoid prosecution under the Endangered Species Act and The Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, as well as other foundational environmental legislation. The fossil fuel industry, however, has been swiftly prosecuted and made to pay extensive fines when their activities had any perceived impacts on birds or other wildlife.
http://www.coalblog.org/2014/03/03/robert-bryce-killing-wildlife-in-the-name-of-climate-change/
Has nothing to do with validity of the Science
Neither does your ‘appeal to authority’ fallacy.
But that’s all you’ve got. So you use it, even though it’s not a legitimate argument.
dbstealey
You rightly say the ‘appeal to authority’ fallacy is all Warrenlb has and that is why he uses it.
However, ‘appeal to authority’ is merely a logical fallacy and it is NOT an “argument”. Warrenlb provides no evidence and no arguments because he has none.
Richard
What do you consider as “valid” science?
“and it will take decades of that completely new mindset to overcome the present groupthink.”
I’m confident that it will happen through the next ten years. I think that the evidence will be stacking up for solar forcing of ENSO, and of the NAO/AO at down to weekly and daily scales, leading to a very different model of the climate. And I’m certain of a lot of changes in weather types and climate through the next ten years that alone will invalidate the current models.
I agree. As has been said, “It is fatal to be modern. One can become old-fashioned quite suddenly.”
My one and only fear – experiencing the end of the interglacial.
My fear is that during this whole debate, mans greed will overcome his consideration for future generations.
Well, one of my fears has been allayed, Mitt Romney has dropped out of the presidential race.
Evidence that God does answer prayers…???
My biggest fear is that my property in the Sierra Nevada foothills is not now going to be beach front property like what I was promised..
My biggest worry is that when the average person finally wises up to the lies and bullshit from the ACC camp – that there will be a general backlash against REAL sciences (a backlash becasue they, the public, feel let-down, abuses, jilted, by the people they trusted for truth and reliability).
There are some deserving conservation things around – we need to clean up our act, stop/reduce pollution (no, CO2 is not a pollutant!), reduce deforestation, etc.
It bothers me that people will turn away from the REAL things becasue of the SCAM thing…
The Australian National University recently had an advertising campaign, which I read as “join the thought police”. Yes, I know that it actually said “leader”, but all over Canberra I was seeing hoarding that made me think thought police.
This is what I fear about the CAGW campaign. It is making “activist scientists” seem normal. Recently an author on one of the IPCC reports got arrested chaining himself to a coal loader. His position as a scientist has been completely discreditted, but nobody seems to have noticed.
The word scientist is slowly becoming synonymous with propagandist.