A lot of us look at the actions of climate change alarmists and wonder how what would seem to be educated people can justify their own actions given the way they sometimes behave. Personally, I often wonder if they aren’t just so off-the-rails that they end up becoming like the “crazy cat lady of climate” in Australia who spends most of her waking hours digging in her own virtual cat litter for nuggets to expound upon, to prove that somehow “climate deniers” are bad and that climate alarmists are good.
Dr. Judith curry has an interesting post about the editor of Science, she writes:
Here is a clear-cut example of advocacy by a scientist, Marcia McNutt, who also happens to be the Chief Editor of Science: The beyond-two-degree inferno. Read the whole thing, its only about 600 words. I cite here the passages that I particularly want to comment on:
The time for debate has ended. Action is urgently needed. The Paris-based International Energy Agency recently announced that current commitments to cut CO2 emissions [known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs)] from the world’s nations are insufficient to avoid warming the entire planet by an average of more than 2°C above the preindustrial level. To set more aggressive targets, developed nations need to reduce their per-capita fossil fuel emissions even further, and by doing so, create roadmaps for developing nations to leapfrog technologies by installing low-CO2–emitting energy infrastructure rather than coal-fired power plants as they expand their energy capacity.
I applaud the forthright climate statement of Pope Francis, currently our most visible champion for mitigating climate change, and lament the vacuum in political leadership in the United States. This is not the time to wait for political champions to emerge. Just as California has decided to go it alone, every sector (transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, construction, etc.) and every person need to do whatever is possible to reduce carbon pollution by conserving energy, adopting alternative energy technologies, investing in research, and capturing CO2 at the source.
In Dante’s Inferno, he describes the nine circles of Hell, each dedicated to different sorts of sinners, with the outermost being occupied by those who didn’t know any better, and the innermost reserved for the most treacherous offenders. I wonder where in the nine circles Dante would place all of us who are borrowing against this Earth in the name of economic growth, accumulating an environmental debt by burning fossil fuels, the consequences of which will be left for our children and grandchildren to bear? Let’s act now, to save the next generations from the consequences of the beyond-two-degree inferno.
…
Re the Dante Inferno allegory. Digging In the Clay has an interesting and entertaining post Climate Scientists Road to Hell:
But there is another road to hell for climate scientists and editors of journals and professional societies, that involves
- Appeal to authority
- Absence of doubt
- Intolerance of debate
- A desire to convince others of the ideological ‘truth’
- A willingness to punish those that don’t concur
That last bit is something I have to deal with; it happens mainly because WUWT is so successful and reaches far more people [than] most of the alarmist blogs out there. I and others who dare to question the “consensus” get the “slime and punishment” every day. I wear it as a badge of honor, because if WUWT wasn’t effective, they wouldn’t bother.
As far as the way they use the knowledge they have (that they feel superior about) goes, I’d say that alarmists are “model” citizens, all. It reminds me of a Faustian bargain, whereby Faust traded his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and power.
![fausttitle[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/fausttitle1.jpg?resize=620%2C346&quality=83)
The question is; is the knowledge acquired worth anything? And will the power they assume they have over others due to this knowledge stand the test of time?
We’ll find out soon, because nature just isn’t cooperating. Hence, they have the need for adjusting reality to fit the bargain. And, it seems the Pope’s encyclical, our modern example of a Faustian bargain, isn’t making much of an impact beyond the already converted.
In somewhat related news, I’ll have an anti-Faustian announcement this week. Stay tuned.
UPDATE: I get word that there will be yet another “blockbuster” paper published this week that will attempt to explain “the pause”. From what I make of it, it is an attempt to explain the “missing heat” using “spooky action at a distance” in the oceans. Watching the entanglement will be hilarious.
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“The time for debate has ended.”
We never had a debate! The cotton candy theory couldn’t stand a debate. This is the lame signature statement of the eyediologicals. Gore said it, Obama said it, MSM chorus sings it, doctrinaire government scientists spout it under orders, a pope grabs onto the straw, witlessly risking the survival of Catholicism by schmoozing with Groucho’s last namesake pol-philosophy. It is the bankrupt plaint of a group of campaigners who have no answers to critiques by opponents of the languishing CO2 theory of the end of the world and even nature’s own repudiation of it.
Dr. McNutt is a first generation product of lefty educational lobotomy that has brought us post-normal scientists. The brain power needed in earlier generations for an advanced degree in physics would otherwise be more than a little suspicious of a theory propounded by such as Maurice Strong, a communist from the Canadian prairies (now resident in Beijing – as a lifelong admirer of Chinese communism) whose formal education ended with high school. Some of course will argue that the idea was from the much smarter Margaret Thatcher, but the point remains.
I love this line: ” …to avoid warming the entire planet by an average of more than 2°C above the preindustrial level.” I can not understand, for the life of me, as to how any rational informed soul could possibly believe that the 12.5 C global temperature in the depths of the Little Ice Age is somehow a goal we should strive towards. Does that mean that a 12.5 C global temperature is “normal?”
We stand now at approximately 14 C in global temperature. We could most certainly take another 3 C rise in global temperatures like it was during the Eemian interglacial, and still be rather comfortable. What is it with climate scientists who seem to be completely in the dark when it comes to the knowledge of climate history?
Let’s not forget that ‘average global temperature” is a useless measurement.
Thank you Anthony for this forum and source of information. The debate is never over!
I hate to be reminded that Marcia McNutt was Director of the US Geological Survey for a few years, leading up to my decision to retire after nearly 40 years. I don’t mind retirement at all, I just can’t bring myself to think of her in the same capacity as John Wesley Powell
Under her leadership, USGS went from an agency of Geology, Hydrology, Geography, and Biology to a mish-mash of Climate and Land Use Change, Core Science Systems [don’t ask], Ecosystems, Energy and Minerals, Environmental Health [don’t ask either], Natural Hazards, and Water. No one understands it.
All “ecosystem modeling” work begins with the unquestioned presumption that IPCC scenarios are true and that increases of 4-6 C are realistic
And now Sally Jewell heads the whole Dept of Interior [“I hope there are no climate change deniers in the Department of Interior” – Sept 2013]
These are not incompetent women – they are incompetent, unscientific people
She uses the term “sustainability” which is one of the code words of UN Agenda 21, and ICLEI, to stealthily get into local government planning departments in the US and world wide. She has bought into that, evidently.
Sustainable is sclerotic. Sadly, it will be centrally organized and we’ll all smart from it.
==================
OK, I gotta ask –
what are “Core Science Systems”??
In the first iteration of this “reorganization”, CSS was called “Informatics” – the “science” of metadata
CSS now covers various geoscience database activities, including Ecosystem and Biodiversity databases, geophysical data archives, geochronology databases, fossil collections, and even geologic mapping(!).
The hydrologists put up a fuss and retained their streamflow and water quality databases, as did the mineral resource (rock geochemical data) and energy resource (hydrocarbon data) folks
After Marcia waltzed off to her next glam job at Science mag, USGS was stuck with this hodge-podge
In Dante’s Inferno, he describes the nine circles of Hell
Having threatened us with a series of calamities which have not come to pass, and for which observable data supporting their future existence has also not come to pass, they now stoop to threatening us with eternal damnation. Pretty sad coming from the chief editor of “Science”.
There is a huge mismatch here between natural-forced changes in weather pattern variations, and human-forced changes in weather pattern variations.
1. First, climate scientists need to admit that heating or cooling trends come from a day to day weather pattern variation that forces temperatures up, or allows temperatures to come down.
2. Climate scientists now need to calculate the change in energy needed to change a weather pattern system such that temperatures cool, or conversely to have the energy to build one that typically leads to increased land temperatures. I am talking about such things as blocking highs, instability mixing, increased or decreased wind that results from opposing pressure systems, changes in jet stream locations, etc.
3. Then they need to calculate the amount of energy available in JUST THE ADDITION OF ANTHROPOGENIC CO2 (hint: they have done this part already and found it lacking).
4. They need to then calculate the amount of water vapor needed to add its energy to A-CO2, in order to create a weather pattern variation that would increase temperatures beyond the capabilities of natural-forced changes.
5. Finally, they need to be able to propose what kind of weather pattern variation must be in place in order for Earth to warm due to A-CO2.
To state it bluntly, we cannot have increasing temperatures without also having weather pattern variations that lead to increasing temperatures. So. If climate scientists cannot prove that airborn anthropogenic CO2 forces change in weather pattern variations, and even has the energy necessary to work against natural cooling patterns, they got nothin. And the people of Earth need to be warned of this slight of hand snake oil pitch for what it is. A scheme for the pitchers and makers of snake oil to have the kind of life they desire for themselves without regard to the life of the people they are selling this concoction to.
Suggest the article link to Judith Curry’s blog post it mentioned.
http://judithcurry.com/2015/07/05/the-beyond-two-degree-inferno/#more-19223
And if the Alarmist win, Gaia is the loser. Why? Because without “energy,” there is no clothing, thus all the animals that bear fur will be sacrificed to the need for protection from the cold. You can’t wear a pine tree, you can’t wear a cotton plant, you can’t wear sheared wool and few are the people that still have the means to create cloth from them. Besides, without “fossil fuels,” there will be no 10,000 acre farms growing cotton.
It is amusing to look at the world that they wish to create, where they can fight with the lion for a piece of antelope, or with a bear for berries. All the while, those that created the farce we call AGW – the Gores, etc., – will be still living high on the assets that they have created for themselves with their pockets of industry hidden away allowing them to live the life of luxury while their green army destroys the rest of us.
No, in the world that they will make, there will be no fights between humans and lions or bears. we will all be friends. You see?
Thanks, Anthony.
Watts Up With That? is the place to find the news about a science debate that turned into a political one.
What a pity, we could have learned a lot of science but we are condemned to learn a lot of politics.
Stick around. There are plenty of scientific discussions here. No site is free of political talk.
The politics is extremely important. It is the politics in all this that will affect each and every one of us. The science is valuable too, but we also need a finger on the pulse, and that’s what looking at the politics gives us. Frankly, I would like to see more of it. We can’t defend ourselves unless we know what the alarmists are up to and, as many have pointed out, CAGW is very much a political issue.
I suspect Ms McNutt’s Fautian Bargain has involved a promise of short list contender as WH Science Advisor in a future Clinton Admin in exchange for her advocacy and publishing with pal reviews papers like Karl et al.
Why is it that the warming believers keep producing these people with the same vapid message (quotations without sources, for example). The National Enquirer was famous for the statement – “some scientists believe” to sell their outrageous stories. (One guy married a Martian shaped like a pyramid – I kid you not). For me, I get the same sick feeling when I hear about “a 97% consensus among scientists.” Again, no background. Now tell me the difference between the two? Both rely on pseudo-science – unsupportable or modified data. IMO, the Pope has repeated the same mistake they made with Galileo. In fact, the lines between politics, religion and science are beginning to get tangled up again. Time for a new movie from Hollywood – “Back to the Dark Ages”
Being ‘green’ is referenced to the green foliage of plants, the green color being chlorophyll that converts water plus carbon dioxide’ plus the sun’s energy into oxygen and plant matter. The current usage of ‘green’ by CAGW proponents smacks of a detachment from reality underpinned by a lust for power and omnipotence.
‘Browns’ would be far a far more appropriate moniker: it would dovetail with their usage of the term ‘denier’.
McNutt, is a full on ‘think of the children’ type and has made it clear that in the name of ‘the cause ‘ Nature will used to promote it and never mind the facts .
The trouble is the assumption that becasue a journal has been good in the [past] it will be good for evermore , in pratice once the editorship becomes ‘politicised’ this is seldom the case , has we are seeing hear .
Add in that ‘success’ is measured be sells figuers not actual scientific value and normal problems of peer review , of which there are many. And you can see that in pratice it not the ‘best journals’ but the least worse journals that rise to the top.
If I remember rightly, Marcia McNutt is a solid-earth geophysicist–a tectonophysics sort of scientist. Many of these folks drifted into the universe of “models are data” a long time before the climate craziness went pandemic, and were thus susceptible to seeing truth in matrices of numbers, and authority in computer output. There is a price to pay for separation from reality.
So, these days a so-called study typically takes the form:
“We started out with a proposition that we could demonstrate that something terrible would happen if CO2 continues to rise during this century.
Then we programmed our models to respond with high sensitivity to CO2.
And then, we did indeed see that in a number of model runs, some quite extreme and frightening things seemed to occur.
We promise that we did not at any point tweak the models to lead them in the direction of providing us with precisely the alarmist scenarios that we originally sought.
Now, even we are shocked that the models not only confirmed our original hypothesis, but suggest that the situation will be even worse than we had originally believed”. (satire of sorts)
So, the scientific method now comprises the confirmation of a hypothesis using a computer model.
Surely something went wrong.
Weren’t we supposed investigate possible hypotheses using computer models – but confirm only by reference to empirical reality?
There was yet another of these purely computer generated “results” reported on the BBC today.
As though it was a real scientific conclusion.
http://www.cagle.com/working/091125/allie.jpg
Beyond 2 degree inferno? That would be similar to conditions during the Holocene Optimum, which allowed humans to progress toward civilization.
Reality or fiction?
And it’s fiction we chose;
But why are we so spellbound
By the Emperor’s new clothes?
The truth is inconvenient,
Does not fit with the plan,
And Mother Nature they’ve made redundant
For not co-operating with man.
http://rhymeafterrhyme.net/theres-something-afoot/
Anthony,
I read your post citing Judith Currie who quotes Marcia McNutt who cites Pope Francis and Dante all of which alludes, to Goethe’s/Marlowe’s/de Coincy’s Faust and convolves Francis in a Faustian Bargain with ?? the devil or the UN??
Honestly the metaphor is lost to me with all that nesting. It was like doing linear algebra in my head.
All that medieval art and “enlightenment” literature leaves me with some questions and comments.
1) I don’t perceive a Faustian Bargain made by Francis. I read the whole encyclical and I read it as a mish mash of bad politics, distorted history wrt JPII and BXVI, good moral teaching, horrendous economics, general confusion and outright wrong science. I did not regard it as a Faustian Bargain per se.
2) You say “And, it seems the Pope’s encyclical, our modern example of a Faustian bargain, isn’t making much of an impact beyond the already converted.” I agree that it isn’t making much of an impact outside the AGW activists.Since he was preaching to the converted. But I fear it may creep into the sermons of the RC Churches and by this stolen authority, generate new converts and a new level of activism.
3) Who plays Mephistopheles? Who is the devil?
Answer to (3) The political statist the Pope is in league with.
The Pope is blind to the bargain he made.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/02/19/article-2562896-1BA1E03400000578-431_634x483.jpg
Hmm.. Maybe… but what is the upside to the bargain? What can Mephistopheles (Hans Schellnhuber) offer?
…” but what is the upside to the bargain? What can Mephistopheles (Hans Schellnhuber) offer?”
====================================
Hum, that is the rub no? The etymology is the word may derive from the Hebrew mephitz, meaning “destroyer”, and tophel, meaning “liar”; “tophel” is short for tophel shequer, the literal translation of which is “falsehood plasterer”.
So the offer is always a lie, a false representation. This Pope is apparently himself a statist of sorts, one who has quite forgotten what a disaster it was for Christianity to become the state religion in Rome. It is appealing to him to be on the side of “97 percent of the scientists”, a trade for “worldly knowledge”, one of the good guys, accepting the science of the day, not denying it, not one of those evil “capitalists”.
In my view this will have some affect promoting CAGW, but I think it will also drive more from the church. Why go to church, when you can get the same lecture from your local progressive politician?
AGW is already in the RC Church and this Papal Letter will only re-enforce what’s already there. And it’s in other denominations too.
May be the reason why polls show this?
Here is an example.
Ecumenical Letter: Price On Carbon Emissions, April, 10, 2015
Letter to the Min. of Finance Canada in support of putting a price on carbon emissions in Canada.
Letter has 53 signatures including those from various religious organizations/denominations.
http://www.share.ca/files/15-04-10_Ecumenical_carbon_price_letter-Min_Finance.pdf
The Papal Encyclical just puts an “official” stamp on what was already taking place.
The World Bank, 11-06-14
‘We Support Putting a Price on Carbon’
Scroll down to: Investors
Has the names of investors who support carbon pricing which also includes religious organizations.
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTSDNET/Resources/carbon-pricing-supporters-list-UPDATED-110614.pdf
This belief that man can influence and control nature is a direct consequence and continuation of man’s aboriginal calamity.
I gave up my long-time subscription to Science back when Donald Kennedy was editor, but I would occasionally read it thereafter. With McNutt, I simply quit looking. Science is so biased as to have lost credibility in many areas.
About:
-Appeal to authority
-Absence of doubt
-Intolerance of debate
-A desire to convince others of the ideological ‘truth’
-A willingness to punish those that don’t concur
That’s 5 out of 8:
“Type I: Overestimations of the group — its power and morality
1 -Illusions of invulnerability creating excessive optimism and encouraging risk taking.
2 -Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group, causing members to ignore the consequences of their actions.
Type II: Closed-mindedness
3 -Rationalizing warnings that might challenge the group’s assumptions.
4 -Stereotyping those who are opposed to the group as weak, evil, biased, spiteful, impotent, or stupid.
Type III: Pressures toward uniformity
5 -Self-censorship of ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus.
6 -Illusions of unanimity among group members, silence is viewed as agreement.
7 -Direct pressure to conform placed on any member who questions the group, couched in terms of “disloyalty”
8 -Mindguards— self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting information.
Obviously the other symptoms fit perfectly as well.
Science is dead, all what is left is groupthink.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink
There’s an older term for it: “tribal thinking”. Main characteristic of it is the inability to see and accept fault in the own group.
Well, the alarmists have convinced a large portion of the world that we’re destroying the planet. What scares me more than any of the alarmist scenarios is what some people might try to do about it – and some of them have a lot of money to work with. We’ve vilified simple survival action – heating homes, food production, transportation. Anybody remember Michael Crichton’s essay in the Lost World about behavior-based extinction? Hell, the eco-types are demanding upwards of 90% human population reduction. Eugenics was about saving the human race from ‘mongrel races’ – and look how that worked out. With green, it’s the planet that needs saving from the human race itself. You can use any belief system to justify atrocity, but it takes a little tinkering to get from the words of Jesus, for example, to justify burning a woman at the stake. With the religion of green, it’s written right into the scripture.
Claiming that a catastrophe is coming in the future is an ancient technique used by men to gain power.
Preventing the imagined catastrophe always requires that everyone does as he is told.
Religious leaders and political leaders have used this method for centuries.
The coming climate change catastrophe has almost nothing to do with science — it is an imaginary boogeyman used by leftists to gain political and economic power.
The leftist scientists are merely pawns to provide “proof”, with their silly climate model games — people could doubt Al Gore, because he took only two science courses in college, and couldn’t manage to get an A or B in either of them … but it’s hard to doubt real scientists with PhDs. and REALLY BIG COMPUTERS.
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The average person never considers the fact that predictions of the future climate are not science — they are nothing more than climate astrology.
The climate change boogeyman can work if enough people believe in it — Earth doesn’t have to warm at all — the catastrophe is always coming to get us (but never arrives!).
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I think it’s very obvious that more CO2 in the air was good news for green plants, and slight warming since the 1800s was good news for humans.
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No one can predict the future climate, but if I had a choice, I’d choose more CO2 and more warming (most or all of the warming is caused by variables other than CO2, in my opinion)
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The past 150 years have been the most healthy and prosperous 150 years for humans so far — CO2 was increasing, and there was slight warming — why would anyone with sense want to change those trends?
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My Climate blog for the average guy:
http://www.elOnionBloggle.blogspot.com
+1
I like that graph and use it all the time. I don’t think the alarmist believe it. They dismiss it.
?w=636&h=294
It doesn’t show any significant global warming.
There is a larger GISS version somewhere:
Richard, Claiming that a catastrophe is coming in the future is an ancient technique used by men to gain power”
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One of my favorite quotes,; “This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.”
The irony is that the alarmists think climate change skeptics are the devil himself selling their soul for capital profit or big oil. Meanwhile most skeptics are just regular people that took the time to do some research. They are simply saying like the the title of this blog, “what’s up with that? ” The answer alarmists always give is your a shill, a liar or you are too ignorant to understand. I’m not sure how much longer that will work for them.
So, now the pause will be explained by “spooky action at a distance”? Nice! I love the Alice In Wonderland world of quantum entanglement, where everything not forbidden is mandatory. ;->
I suspect that distance to be 93 million miles.