Claim: A pioneer "frontier mentality" causes climate denial

Naomi Klein, GNU Free Documentation License, photographer Mariusz Kubik https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Naomi_Klein_Warsaw_Nov._19_2008_Fot_Mariusz_Kubik_02.jpg
Naomi Klein, GNU Free Documentation License, photographer Mariusz Kubik https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Naomi_Klein_Warsaw_Nov._19_2008_Fot_Mariusz_Kubik_02.jpg

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Naomi Klein has claimed that the reason Americans, British, Australians and Canadians are the world’s leading “climate deniers”, is that we share a “frontier mentality”.

According to Klein;

Klein said the denial of climate science was prevalent in English-speaking countries such as Australia, Canada, the US and the UK because of a “colonial settler mentality”.

“Countries founded on a powerful frontier mentality have this idea of limitless nature than can be endlessly extracted,” she said.

“Climate change is threatening to that because there are limits and you have to respect those limits. Where that frontier narrative is strongest is where denialism is strongest.

“The rest of Europe has a keener sense of boundaries – they’ve lived against the limits of nature for longer.”

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/aug/17/tony-abbott-is-a-climate-change-villain-says-canadian-author-naomi-klein

For once Naomi has a point. People who reject climate alarmism, in my experience, tend to be people who think for themselves.

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August 18, 2015 3:01 am

“for themselves” is unnecessary.

MattS
Reply to  Slywolfe
August 18, 2015 7:01 am

+1000

mike
Reply to  MattS
August 18, 2015 12:59 pm

Check out the “Wiki” entry for Naomi Klein and you’ll find she’s blood-line hive-royalty. And if you wonder what her type just might be saying behind our backs, Google: “youtube Larry Grathwohl Ayers”.
Curious, how the hive’s agit-prop machinery is, at the moment, giving Naomi Klein the “star treatment” (apparently at the expense of the less “photogenic” Naomi Oreskes, who must be really bummed-out and steamed-up by this whole, probably unexpected turn of events–though she, Oreskes, did get a Harvard professorship as her “first runner-up”, hive-heroine, golden-trough, lifetime-achievement, get-lost consolation prize, so it’s hard to feel too sorry for her). And you just know sumptin’s cookin’ when the hive deploys a Fox-News, hot-babe knock-off, like Naomi Klein, to push their hellish, dystopian designs, given our betters’ usual, famous preference for women of the “Madame Defarge”, beady-eyed, shrill-and-cranky, proto-commissar persuasion. So, like, maybe the “hive-bozos” are pullin’ out “all the stops”, as a part of some sort of “big-move”, in the near-term offing, I’m thinkin’.
And, finally, I mean, like, I recommend that the “precautionary principle” requires, as a matter of prudence, and very likely self-preservation, as well, that us lovers of liberty and ethical science regard Naomi (not you, Orkeses!–quite tryin’ to crash the party, you non-person nobody!) as a nasty, dangerous, ruthless, and cull-crazy, sex-reassignment re-incarnation of Vasily Mikhailovich Blokhin, and not casually dismiss her as some sort of “air-head” big-joke who just happens to suffer from “episodes” of goofy, “Pol Pot”-obsessed, stalker-“crush” hysterics.

FT
Reply to  MattS
August 18, 2015 6:05 pm

Mike: that’s some sell you got there. Why not just call her a marxoid crank? She’s just trading one pseudo-scientific tradition for another, bringing over some of the old baggage, but this time on Wall Street’s side. Tag her Princess Carbon Credits.

The Original Mike M
Reply to  Slywolfe
August 18, 2015 8:05 am

“Think for themselves”, can actually be interpreted as a badge of honor here. The context describes people like me who think independently – as a opposed to those in the CAGW camp who rely on others to do the thinking for them. No?

Reply to  The Original Mike M
August 18, 2015 10:45 am

Nobody will be thinking for themselves with this planned new curriculum in middle schools around “Climate Science”. http://www.middleweb.com/24513/teach-climate-change-through-positive-action/

Reply to  Slywolfe
August 18, 2015 8:48 am

We have to stop letting these warmistas use phrases like ” denialism” without objecting loudly.
I do not practice denialism, whatever the hell that is.
Which is the worst part of such s phrase… it means whatever they want it to mean, and the definition is fluid and infinitely morphable.
And, as well, same goes for her insinuation that it is those who are skeptical of CAGW alarmism are the ones who feel ” threatened by climate change”!
They are the fools who feel threatened by boogeymen, and who have decided that all sorts of normal events are instead portents of doom.

K. Kilty
Reply to  menicholas
August 18, 2015 8:50 am

fluid and morphable, just like the science they practice.

MarkW
Reply to  menicholas
August 18, 2015 10:42 am

We had a poster on this site yesterday who kept insisting that everything must be banned, until it can be proven to be completely safe in all conceivable circumstances.

Gentle Tramp
Reply to  menicholas
August 18, 2015 12:16 pm

“Denialism” in their meaning must be a kind of obsessive-compulsive-neurosis, because as true believers, they simply cannot understand why “normal people”, who are not paid by evil “Big Oil”, do not accept their infallible (and by Gaia herself blessed) teachings for saving mankind from great satan CO2 … 😉
That is of course the same line of thinking as in the old Soviet Union where all dissidents who couldn’t enjoy the likewise infallible doctrine of Communism were declared to be insane and treated accordingly…
Well, the point is, the orthodox CAGW believers are partly right: We climate realists are really not quite “normal”. Otherwise we would just join the “righteous flock” of the conformist majority of humans and accept the ruling green religion. But we are not conformist people. We prefer to think and check the facts for ourselves. Thus we are not normal. But are we insane then? No, in spheres of totalitarian thinking and cult-like religions, “Denialism” is the only healthy thing to do.

richard clenney
Reply to  menicholas
August 19, 2015 5:25 am

Finagles’ Factor reborn!

Reality Observer
Reply to  menicholas
August 20, 2015 8:18 am

That’s the problem in a nutshell. We allow the nutcases to define our language.
“Climate Realists” are the premiere denialists – just like the “Progressives” are the premiere back to aristocrat and peasant social regressives.

Patrick
Reply to  Slywolfe
August 18, 2015 9:41 am

Exactly so and when it happens that scientific principles of testing others’ theories is also being prevented then it is clear those that can think are leading the argument. Interesting that this – yet again – brings together the English speaking peoples. Daniel Hannan’s book “How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World” is valid again.

george e. smith
Reply to  Slywolfe
August 18, 2015 9:54 am

Who or what is Naomi Klein; and what is her official title as spokesman for people who are basically a product of the former British Colonial Empire.
So we are a diverse group of peoples who live, or have lived over perhaps a larger portion of the earth’s inhabitable environment, than anyone else in Historical times.
So we are well educated people who are observant, and resourceful.
Hey Naomi, maybe we all learned our basic concepts of freedom and liberty, from the same mother.
And despite our diversity, we get along well with each other; divided mainly by space, and a common language.
And just what did you mean by ” the rest of Europe ” ?
Europe; by far the smallest ” continent ” ; perhaps should like Pluto, be re-classified as a Dwarf Continent, and as far as I know, there are NO English speaking countries, on that dwarf continent.
And they certainly have learned well how to live in harmony with nature and each other; having given us the two greatest world wars, that were so destructive of the natural environment.
How can you even fit so many tower of Babel languages in such a small area ??
Well it is probably true, that it is the peoples of Africa, the second largest real continent, who best live in harmony with nature; so I’m sure they would be the most informed about global warming, and sea level rise, and ocean acidification, and the other clearly apparent consequences of climate change.
We DON’T deny climate science Naomi; we follow it studiously, wherever its evidence leads us.
And we aren’t impressed with the kind of psycho-babble rationalizations that you have dreamed up.
And yes basically ALL of us DO believe in climate change, and few of us have denied that.
g

Reply to  george e. smith
August 18, 2015 10:45 am

Great comment, George.

inMAGICn
Reply to  george e. smith
August 18, 2015 10:56 am

George, as for English-speaking countries in Europe, have you forgotten the Grand Duchy of Fenwick?

Reply to  george e. smith
August 18, 2015 12:27 pm

One small point–you will find English not only spoken in all of the European countries as a lingua franca for world commerce and diplomacy, but in many of those countries English is also a required second language in schools, for obvious reasons. The English language is not spoken on only one side of the Climate Threat wars, and mention of English-speaking countries is really silly in this context, except to say that our ordinary [and incidentally English-speaking] citizens are trying to lead our leaders to enlightenment. And, disappointing I realize, I speak English and live in the twenty-first century, and I doubt (deny? really!) a lot of warmist nonsense even makes sense to English-speaking warmists; but even San Diego, where I grew up, though on a border, is not any sort of frontier town, and I doubt I could muster up a frontier mentality if I tried.
If Ms. Klein wishes to find a “mentality” in common among those who strive against institutional foolishness, she will have to find a real one.

mikegeo
Reply to  george e. smith
August 18, 2015 12:34 pm

george e smith – unfortunately for canadians, Naomi is one of our high profile, whiny liberals. Naomi is quick to share her opinions, but not anything else she’s garnered out of the free-market, capitalist system. We still call those types – pink cadillac communists. She drives several.

george e. smith
Reply to  george e. smith
August 18, 2015 1:03 pm

We have more people parking in my favorite MacDonalds parking lot, than there are in the Grand Duchy of Fenwick.
But I will grant that the GDF may have more people who speak fluent English, than MacDonalds parking lot does.
se habla espanol.
I didn’t say nobody in dwarf continental Europe could speak English. The French won’t ever admit it though.
g

george e. smith
Reply to  george e. smith
August 18, 2015 1:12 pm

and for Don Newkirk, it was not I who listed the principal English speaking former colonies of the British Empire, as her chief denialists.
That was Madame Klein. She didn’t say fluency in English was her metric; just non European Colonial residues.
Does the name Naomi mean guru or something like that; there seems to be a disproportionate number of them blowing their horns ??

inMAGICn
Reply to  george e. smith
August 18, 2015 1:47 pm

Long live Grand Duchess Gloriana XII! (She loves Big Macs, I hear.)

Auto
Reply to  george e. smith
August 18, 2015 2:22 pm

G
Gibraltar
Auto

Reply to  george e. smith
August 18, 2015 2:42 pm

reorge – re: McDonalds.
I don’t think I’ve passed a McDonald’s in quite awhile where there weren’t far more cars idling in the takeout line than were parked with patrons inside. Isn’t that an indicator of denialism, spewing all that “carbon pollution” while waiting for the Big Mac and fries? Interesting that McDonald’s parking lots are where “that frontier narrative is strongest”.

4 eyes
Reply to  george e. smith
August 18, 2015 4:23 pm

+1

E.M.Smith
Editor
Reply to  george e. smith
August 19, 2015 3:12 am

@Don Newkirk:
Good points… I would only add that India has the most English speakers, the most English newspapers, and their own recognized dialect (preservig some old British forms now absent from Britain…)

rw
Reply to  george e. smith
August 19, 2015 1:10 pm

You don’t know who Naomi Klein is?! This the Paris Hilton of the AGW movement.

duke silver
Reply to  Slywolfe
August 19, 2015 6:00 am

Funny they always call on us “frontier types” when there’s a terrorist to be captured or someone needs a handout.

johnmarshall
August 18, 2015 3:02 am

I like self reliance. Less socialist interference and control.
Climate science is about control not science.

Joseph French JD LLM
Reply to  johnmarshall
August 18, 2015 5:26 am

Amen!

vboring
Reply to  johnmarshall
August 18, 2015 6:24 am

Self reliance is definitely one of the forces that pushes people into independent thought – and thus the chance that they’ll be a climate skeptic.
There are a few other forces that can push someone towards climate skepticism:
Expectation of loss. If a theory results in you losing, then you’ll approach it more skeptically.
Perception of nature. People who grow up in urban areas are more likely to perceive nature as a small fragile thing and people as a big problem because it is true where they live. People from rural areas see nature as large and resilient and people as a small issue because it is true where they live.
I think these are two important drivers, but don’t know how to separate them. Many, if not most rural economies are tied to oil, gas, or coal or resource intensive industries like farming. And there tend to be religious and political influences that are hard to unmuddle. Maybe self-reliance is another important characteristic that is influenced by the population density of where you grew up.
In any case, it is easy to observe a correlation between how rural a place is and their level of skepticism about climate science, at least in the US:
http://environment.yale.edu/poe/v2014/

TBraunlich
Reply to  vboring
August 18, 2015 7:51 am

“People who grow up in urban areas are more likely to perceive nature as a small fragile thing and people as a big problem because it is true where they live. People from rural areas see nature as large and resilient and people as a small issue because it is true where they live.”
A very good counter-point to the article’s “frontier mentality” claim.

Cameron Kuhns
Reply to  vboring
August 18, 2015 8:47 am

Growing up in an urban area, I believe that the environment is a lot more resilient than a lot of other urbanites think.

Brett Keane
Reply to  vboring
August 18, 2015 10:53 am

Ditto for Australasia

inMAGICn
Reply to  vboring
August 18, 2015 10:59 am

A someone who has worked in some of the most hostile areas in the US and Africa, I learned long ago that you can live with nature but never, never, think nature is friendly or even benign.

E.M.Smith
Editor
Reply to  vboring
August 19, 2015 3:22 am


I would add that a decent education in a tecnical field also predisposes to seeing all the gaping holes and bogosities in the Global Warming speculation (it really doesn’t rate being called a theory…).
Over represented among skeptics are geologists, engineers, business managers, computer programmers, economists, meteorologists. .. people who do analysis for aliving…

Leonard Lane
Reply to  johnmarshall
August 18, 2015 10:32 am

Thank you John.
Self-reliance, freedom of thought and body, equal justice under law, belief in Constitutional government, abhorrence of socialism and communism and totalitarianism of any kind do seem to be part of the pioneer/frontier beliefs. Freedom of religion, the right to own property, equal opportunity, patriotism, good citizenship, and responsibility for our own actions also seem to thrive in the frontier “mentality”; as do charity, love of neighbors, and love of work and accomplishment.

commieBob
Reply to  Leonard Lane
August 18, 2015 12:19 pm

I am old enough and had the good fortune to be raised in a place and time where real pioneers were very much part of my life. You and Naomi Klein are both wrong. Pioneers had various reasons for settling the unplowed frontier. They brought their attitudes and behaviors from wherever they were born. As a group, I would say that their main common characteristic is that they tended to be much more in touch with reality than their university educated grandchildren. Otherwise, forget trying to paint them with any particular brush. eg. “… Yes, there were socialists in South Dakota in its earliest days …”

Bill Treuren
Reply to  johnmarshall
August 18, 2015 11:59 am

Yep we know what sheep are really like.
All that stuff in bible about flocks is just not that interesting once you have been at a shearing shed for a few months.
Even if this CAGW is a fresh new religion

August 18, 2015 3:02 am

I don’t think anybody sane denies that climate change happens. The issue on the table is how much man is causing it, and what if anything man can do about it.
While I’m at it, I wonder if the people who want to stop/control warming, which is what they’re really alarmed about, have given a thought to the law of unintended consequences. What if they somehow DO manage to corral CAGW, and in the process launch another ice-age? Maybe one they can’t stop? Now you’d have something to be alarmed about as glaciers once again envelop a third or more of the planet.
(See— I can put together as credible an alarmist theory as they can— and based on stuff pulled from the same location they got their stuff.)

johnmarshall
Reply to  mjmsprt40
August 18, 2015 3:05 am

We affect local weather but climate? I do not think so. Local weather reverts to “norm” when left alone.

Reply to  mjmsprt40
August 18, 2015 3:46 am

Actually, it is the climate-alarmists who tend to believe that “climate change” is something new. I.e. we never had this problem before until these flatulent humans started to increase their spewing of carbon dioxide in the 20th century.
Skeptics tend to believe that “climate change” has always been around. And it has been worse in the past.

AndrewS
Reply to  Johanus
August 18, 2015 8:55 am

She comes off as a political Luddite. ‘Climate Change’ in the past before human historical records have been much more dramatic than anything we’ve experienced. I would add that urbanites tend to view themselves as somehow separate from nature, as an anomaly that does not belong(self loathing?), whereas rural dwellers tend more to see themselves as an integral part of nature and working in harmony with it. Directly relative to the artificiality of their environment. mjmsprt40 says, “The issue on the table is how much man is causing it…,” and this directly relates to why she is using the term ‘Climate Change’, and not the now seemingly discarded term ‘AGW’. With ‘Climate Change’, the alarmists have the bases covered no matter which way the climate goes.

Dawtgtomis
Reply to  Johanus
August 18, 2015 11:02 am

Let me hear an AMEN here!

Reply to  Johanus
August 18, 2015 1:38 pm

Amen, Brother Dawtgtomis!
* Sorry if I pronounced your name wrong :-)*

Dog
Reply to  mjmsprt40
August 18, 2015 10:33 am

It would be pretty damn funny if alarmists some how found a way to lower Co2 concentrations within the atmosphere only to lose control and drop it to dangerously low levels which would effectively choke to death all plant life which in turn would choke the rest of life to death. I know that’s never gonna happen but the irony would be uncanny!

Reply to  Dog
August 18, 2015 1:38 pm

Yeah, hilarious.

cnxtim
August 18, 2015 3:03 am

cooeee

August 18, 2015 3:05 am

Clutching at straws doesn’t begin to describe it! She though, being of superior intellect, is immune.

Alex
August 18, 2015 3:23 am

Probably lives alone with 2 cats

Reply to  Alex
August 18, 2015 3:42 am

…with 2 gender-neutral cats…

Klem
Reply to  Alex
August 18, 2015 3:43 am

More like 20 cats.

Reply to  Klem
August 18, 2015 3:48 am

Toxoplasma gondii from the cats…..

toorightmate
Reply to  Klem
August 18, 2015 5:22 am

What have you guys got against cats?

Reply to  Klem
August 18, 2015 8:39 am

Actually, I was thinking she is far less hideous looking than most warmistas.

BFL
Reply to  Klem
August 18, 2015 10:07 am
Reply to  Klem
August 18, 2015 10:13 am

BFL,
Top each his own. You don’t have to like cats; just say so. You don’t need links harvested from the internet. You can find similar links that apply to every domesticated animal.

BFL
Reply to  Klem
August 18, 2015 3:25 pm

DB: I didn’t say I didn’t like cats (I actually do), I said this is what I’ve got against them. They do seem to have more virile nasties that transfer to humans than dogs. And I mostly avoid them for the same reason that I wouldn’t ride a motorcycle in Dallas, especially during rush hour. Just a personal risk issue.

Edmonton Al
Reply to  Alex
August 18, 2015 3:45 am

And her Ouija board

Brett Keane
Reply to  Edmonton Al
August 18, 2015 11:02 am

Indeed, but now we are being accused of cat-denial. The enormity if it.

Tom J
Reply to  Alex
August 18, 2015 8:17 am

Actually, she’s got a young child. But, one mask ask the question as to who’s the child and who’s the parent.

Reply to  Alex
August 18, 2015 9:50 am

Alex what’s wrong with you? I live alone with two cats. They know enough about climate to stay in when it rains and never get as wet as a cat. That takes them more intelligent than warmists who think they know the future. Here is a hint for these warmists: some people are just smarter than others and can see through the lies of their pseudo-scientific prognosticators who have their hands in my pocket to fight an imaginary warming that might or might not happen after I am dead.

Reply to  Arno Arrak (@ArnoArrak)
August 18, 2015 1:45 pm

Interestingly, I also live with two cats.
But mine are not the least bit afraid of rain or getting wet.
They do get a little freaked out by thunder though.
Except Tallulah, since she went deaf from black skink neurotoxin last spring.
Not even afraid of thunder anymore…’cause she can’t hear it.
Least she can walk again.
Cats are slick and cool and anyone who hates ’em is all misguided or sumptin’.

Zeke
Reply to  Arno Arrak (@ArnoArrak)
August 18, 2015 9:40 pm

But that doesn’t mean we should let cats take over the internet.

PiperPaul
Reply to  Alex
August 18, 2015 10:20 am

And Mark?

Reply to  PiperPaul
August 18, 2015 1:46 pm

Mark And Two Cats Mark?

Jaime Jessop
August 18, 2015 3:24 am

It’s odd then that the majority of people pushing the catastrophic global warming message also derive from the same ‘colonialist mentality’ stock. I have a theory: warmists despise and are utterly ashamed of their own capitalist, formerly colonialist culture and its undeniable achievement of stable democracies that have nurtured scientific and technological progress and achievement for the past 200 odd years. That scientific progress and expansion of free enterprise and democracy has, in their opinion, only brought the world to the brink of destruction. It is also evidence of the profoundly racist and culturally insensitive dark heart that beats at the centre of the major industrialised western nations – in their left wing liberal opinion. So they seek to make amends for the ‘sins’ of their forebears by destroying Western capitalist free enterprise culture and science itself, replacing the former with a One World quasi-socialist/environmentalist government and the latter with a dumbed down pastiche of its former self (so called ‘post normal’ science whose chief purpose is to legitimise and reinforce political interventionism.

Alex
Reply to  Jaime Jessop
August 18, 2015 3:29 am

Simpler than that. Just interfering busybodies who like to tell others what to do.

Severian
Reply to  Alex
August 18, 2015 7:06 am

As the remarkably astute social philosopher Eric Hoffer said: “A man who’s own business isn’t worth minding will console himself by trying to mind yours.” Describes these kinds of self important busybodies perfectly.

Charlie
Reply to  Alex
August 18, 2015 7:33 am

Busybodies is perfect description. Progressives are truly the washwomen of the political spectrum. Her writings are like listening to somebody gossip.

PiperPaul
Reply to  Alex
August 18, 2015 10:25 am

Yes. Most noisy, pushy and persistent activists (of all kinds) are just that: interfering busybodies who find a “cause” to justify their totalitarian tendencies. Because being noisy and pushy are not virtuous. Great post by Severian mentioning Hoffer.

Gamecock
Reply to  Alex
August 18, 2015 4:24 pm

Jacques Barzun notes how the Left demands the destruction of the West because the West is sexist, racist, homophobe, et cetera. The ironing is in that it is only the West that considers these bad. Should they succeed in destroying the West, women’s rights will be determined by Muslims, Hindus, or Chinese.
Beware of Libs denigrating the West with Western values.

Rick Bradford
Reply to  Jaime Jessop
August 18, 2015 5:07 am

A previous parallel, when Weepy Bill McKibben tried to become Irish so he could partake in IRA hunger strikes and become a genuine part of the “victimhood”.
Brought to you by this very site …
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/17/the-global-warming-cause-one-mans-substitute-for-victimhood/

MarkW
Reply to  Jaime Jessop
August 18, 2015 10:50 am

Leftists are driven by two thoughts. First, the fact that there are people who have more than they do is somehow evil and that they need govt to get for them what they haven’t been able to get on their own.
Second that the fact that they have so much while others have so little is evil and that they must constantly pay penance for this crime.
The dichotomy between these two poles of their ideology slowly drives them all crazy.

Mani Borshwein
August 18, 2015 3:26 am

Someone posted this on the WUWT facebook page.
http://blog.heartland.org/2015/08/naomi-klein-admits-in-her-climate-change-screed-that-global-warming-is-all-about-anti-capitalist-polemics-and-has-nothing-to-do-really-with-science/

Klein admits progressive policies on the environment are really about what Marx and Lenin said the communist revolution desired 100 years ago — the overthrow of capitalism. This is not about science, or health, at all. “Our economic model is at war with the Earth,” writes Klein. “We cannot change the laws of nature. But we can change our economy. Climate change is our best chance to demand and build a better world.”

hunter
Reply to  Mani Borshwein
August 18, 2015 3:35 am

People who understand the history of Marxism are deeply annoyed that Klein claims deep green is somehow Marxist.

Severian
Reply to  hunter
August 18, 2015 7:11 am

A comment from Reagan’s time was liberals are people who’ve read Marx, conservatives are people who read and understood Marx. Marxism is an entire political ideology based on envy and hatred of those better off than you are, and the masses allow themselves to be manipulated by people who care nothing for them other than the fact they can be used to support a leader’s vault into power. After which they invariably turn on the very people who put them in power with sad but predictable tyranny and death. And yet, what we constantly seem to hear is that the only reason Marxism hasn’t worked (and racked up a body count approaching 100 million in the last century) is it hasn’t been the “right” kind of people in charge. Any system that allows that kind of outcome, massive tyranny and death, cannot ever be done “right” because it is tailor made for abuse. The only govt that actually halfway works is one that limits the power of govt, not magnifies it.

Reply to  hunter
August 18, 2015 12:45 pm

The point is not that deep green is somehow Marxist, but rather that many of the so-called “green” advocates of Global Warming prevention let slip once in a while their literal belief that side-effects of capitalism are somehow what is causing the climate to be chaotic where we don’t desire it to be, and to have somehow gotten out of control–as if it were ever under human control. However, the meme that we run into again and again in the communications from warmists is that “capitalism is nature’s worst enemy”; the number of references in the documented writings of these Climate Science luminaries, movers, and shakers, to Agenda 21, Club of Rome, and other apparently open conspiracies (yes, /snark,/sarc) against the very idea of The Market as a global, cultural institution in its own right. Of course, even the Marxist-derived experiments in the USSR and elsewhere didn’t trust Marx the economist much at all, so, while Greens, as Soviets, are not good Marxists, they are often noisy [loud, messy, sometimes petulant] anti-capitalists, which many Americans have grown to call “Marxists”, even though most of us wouldn’t care to read Marx to determine the difference. Cheers.

John Law
Reply to  Mani Borshwein
August 18, 2015 4:41 am

Gulags anybody!

Steamboat McGoo
Reply to  John Law
August 18, 2015 5:09 am

John law – Already been proposed by the Alarmists. Everything from re-education to prison to being shot.

Reply to  Mani Borshwein
August 18, 2015 6:04 am

“The more we come to know about the gnosis of antiquity, the more it becomes certain that modern movements of thought, such as progressivism, positivism, Hegelianism, and Marxism, are variants of gnosticism.”
— Eric Voegelin, Science Politics and Gnosticism, Two Essays, 1968.
Gnoticism teaches that human spirit was God, was cast to earth as a million points of light and is now trapped in the evil material. Only through the sufficient knowledge, can we return to be God. The process of being removed from God is called “alienation”, a theme that should be familiar to students of Marx, even as he put a secular interpretation on it. Humanity could return to God when it achieved the perfect socialist condition. The foundational ideas of Gnosticism go back to the time of Plato. And thus those who claim to be “secular” are far more pagan than they every could imagine.

Eugene WR Gallun
Reply to  Mani Borshwein
August 18, 2015 6:09 am

Oh, yes — and what type of environmental record have Marxist Leninist nations have produced over the last century? The worst polluters on the face of the planet! Yet Marxist Leninism is touted as the savior of the earth!
It is a crime against the state to report on any of that pollution internally in a Marxist Leninist nation — and in the West a crime against humanity to besmirch Marxist Leninism. All Marxist Leninist know the truth but none will speak it.
Any day now I expect the Western Left to tout Stalin as a pioneering environmentalist.
Eugene WR Gallun

Quinn the Eskimo
Reply to  Mani Borshwein
August 18, 2015 6:16 am

Naomi Klein is the Church Lady of Climate Science. And a Commie Rat B*st*rd.comment image:large

old construction worker
August 18, 2015 3:27 am

“The rest of Europe has a keener sense of boundaries, because they fallow broken window economics and love government pay checks.

Dodgy Geezer
August 18, 2015 3:27 am

Continental Europe has lived for a long time under the Napoleonic Code. One of the differences between that and the British Common Law tradition is that under Common Law you can do anything so long as it’s not forbidden, while under the Napoleonic Code you can’t do anything unless it’s allowed.
I suggest that, if no one has ‘allowed’ people to think that AGW might be wrong, then a typical European will not think that it is….

Tim Crome
Reply to  Dodgy Geezer
August 18, 2015 8:21 am

Very good point, in my duscussions witj colleagues it’s always the French who respobd by asking “Who are you to question the authority of the UN”, rather than actually taking in what is being said.

Jaakko Kateenkorva
August 18, 2015 3:27 am

Naomi Klein darling. Mann-made alarm is turning increasingly unfashionable also elsewhere.

aussie pete
August 18, 2015 3:28 am

The first English settlers in Australia would have lived against what they saw as the limits of nature, as would have been the case in North America. Not sure what Klein means by a keen sense of boundaries. Did this keen sense develope before or after they left their homeland. How does Britain get a different perspective than all the other Colonial Powers, like the French, The Dutch, Portuguese and so on.
Just more Kleinsien bollocks for the boofheads.

Tim Crome
Reply to  aussie pete
August 18, 2015 8:24 am

Britain has the best defined boundaries of all, the sea surrounds the UK! European boundaries have been fluid until very recent times.

asybot
Reply to  Tim Crome
August 18, 2015 11:40 am

But these days they are liquid.all over again with that bloated piece of work in Brussels called the EU which actually stands for Economic Union or European Undoing and not European Union. Klein statement also leads to what is happening all the world with all the immigration problems every where which the main goal of the people behind AGW and “CC”, disruption and destruction of the “Frontier Spirit”. Led and stirred up by people of her ilk.

Jim Jelinski
Reply to  Tim Crome
August 18, 2015 3:40 pm

It seems to me that the borders between Russia and 1) Georgia, 2) Ukraine, and 3) the rest of the world in the Arctic region are still ‘fluid’ to this day…. and Putin is working that the Russian borders ‘flow’ outward (in the direction of Russia taking everything).

Manfred
Reply to  Tim Crome
August 20, 2015 1:29 pm

I beg to differ. New Zealand (NZ) is the global leader of defined boundaries and global isolation and the ‘youngest’ of the democracies Klein referred to in her reference to ‘colonial settler mentality’. There may be a number of reasons for her omission. She may be an ardent admirer the UN work of the NZ former notable left wing Prime Minister Ms. Helen Clarke, Chair of the United Nations Development Group, or is it that New Zealand is considered ‘on-message’ with its array of eco-marxist zealots and Green-pus advocates? Maybe and here’s hoping, she may never have heard of New Zealand.

August 18, 2015 3:29 am

We see evidence of the ice age and know climate changes apart from man. We also look up and see the wonderful thermostat God has made in the form of clouds. We will get another ice age, but we will never overheat.

hunter
August 18, 2015 3:33 am

In the peak years of the eugenics obsession people who questioned the scientific soundness of forced sterilization, race-based marriage limitations, race-based population control, and so much more were called “individualists” and such. Naomi, the historically illiterate historian, is following a script she knows as little about as the focus of her obsession.

Oswald Thake
Reply to  hunter
August 18, 2015 6:02 am

Good point, hunter.

schitzree
Reply to  Oswald Thake
August 18, 2015 6:52 am

Those who forget (or ignore) History are doomed to repeat it. And Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Welcome to modern progressism. >¿<

August 18, 2015 3:38 am

Ideology may be a factor in natural selection.

August 18, 2015 3:42 am

She’s hit the nail
Right on the head,
English speakers can think,
No more to be said!
http://rhymeafterrhyme.net/they-call-me-a-denier/

schitzree
Reply to  rhymeafterrhyme
August 18, 2015 6:54 am

No more needs to be said because you said it so well. ^¿^

Walt D.
August 18, 2015 3:44 am

A problem with AGW movement is that it does not recognize the importance of empirical data in science. The model has to conform to the data and not the opposite. Here we have a classic example – Naomi Klein makes a hypothesis without collecting any information at all on which to base her claim.
Even political analysts know better than this – they actually go out and ask people what they believe and why they believe it.
Incidentally, people in the Czech Republic do not believe in AGW either.

Reply to  Walt D.
August 18, 2015 8:57 am

I suspect she only reads English, so she has absofreakinlutely no idea what anyone outside of these English speaking countries think or believe.

spangled drongo
August 18, 2015 3:45 am

If “frontier mentality” means you have done the hard yards and see no point in returning to this impoverished state, particularly when there is nothing happening outside natural climate variability, then I agree:
http://www.gettyimages.in/detail/photo/worker-carries-a-bundle-of-wood-outside-high-res-stock-photography/158924931

August 18, 2015 3:49 am

What did Ms Klein expect? Even the few alarmists among the pioneers are perceived celebrating an authoritarian Chinese machinery – not only fueling the Western consumerism but with undeterred CO2 emissions.

Mike Bromley the Kurd
August 18, 2015 3:56 am

Which begs the question, exactly how does Klein stand to benefit from such an empty analysis?

Craig
August 18, 2015 4:00 am

…..
I’m banging my head on my desk right now and no, I’m not enjoying it, thanks Naomi!

John Law
Reply to  Craig
August 18, 2015 4:46 am

You’ll end up with a frontier mentality. if you bang to hard.

August 18, 2015 4:05 am

Naomi Klein comes up with a catchy meme, e.g., nologo, Shock Doctrine, and then massages the narrative accordingly. Now where have I seen that before?

TinyCO2
August 18, 2015 4:15 am

She’s not wrong that sceptics and warmists think differently and there is something to the pioneer idea. We are self reliant types who think that problems can be solved if we really want to. It’s no accident that many of us are engineers – the pioneers of technology. The very success of the human race is built on the pioneering spirit. We’ve used the very tiny windows between glaciations to colonise the planet and even space.
If I have to choose between the pioneer or the fraidy cat hiding in their cave, I’ll be out with the pioneer… especially as that spirit of adventure has brought me hot and cold running water, central heating and broadband to my own little cave.
That said, I don’t think that the pioneering spirit or even sceptical spirit is unique to the white, English speaking world.

Steve B
Reply to  TinyCO2
August 18, 2015 4:35 am

In Ayn Rand’s world she called the 2 types of people active man and passive man. Active man is the individualist who goes out and does stuff. Passive man is the collectivist who pretends to do stuff whilst stealing from the active man. Does this sound familiar?

Gregory Lawn
Reply to  Steve B
August 18, 2015 6:04 am

Who is John Galt?

Gregory Lawn
Reply to  Steve B
August 18, 2015 6:08 am

“I pledge by my life, and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine” (John Galt, Atlas Shurgged)

TinyCO2
Reply to  Steve B
August 18, 2015 6:17 am

Ha! I think there’s a third type – whiney man – who is not content with just stealing from active man, he demands that active man gives whiney man what whiney man thinks he deserves and active man should consider himself lucky to have been part of the deal.

Reply to  Steve B
August 18, 2015 8:59 am

Now THAT is funny!

Mark from the Midwest
Reply to  TinyCO2
August 18, 2015 4:46 am

Tiny, I agree and disagree. People that are self-reliant don’t always think that problems can be solved, self-reliant people are usually realists, we don’t joust with windmills. We pick the problems that we can solve, and work to make things better instead of blindly pushing a narrative. Warmists have an idealized view of the world, and, they incorrectly, believe that the ideal can be achieved if we “just pull together.”

Steve B
Reply to  Mark from the Midwest
August 18, 2015 4:51 am

and “pulling together” is collectivism. 🙂

FTOP
Reply to  Mark from the Midwest
August 18, 2015 5:25 am

…and then the idealists wake up in their 30’s and realize the government tied their hands with the rope they thought was used to “pull together”

Arsten
Reply to  Mark from the Midwest
August 18, 2015 10:14 am

Humanity is a very social race with a wanderlust. We are geared for social and group interaction. It is who we are. But we thrive best if the groups can intake new ideas and technologies from others.
People can’t to be too self-reliant. You will have individuals survive, but the species itself will all but die out.
People as a group also can’t be isolated to themselves. In almost all cases, the group dies out because they are less able to internally adapt without the input of new ideas, techniques, and technology. (Also: inbreeding. 😉 )
So, I have to disagree. We as a society need to nurture both individualism and group identity in a beneficial way. The individuals will strike out on their own. When they fail, they can fall back to their group. When they succeed, they can bring their group with them into the success. It is how we have survived for so long, and have been so adaptable to all manner of environments this world has to throw at us. We wouldn’t have had the technology we do today if someone couldn’t sit on their butt for a few days leeching off the group to think up the cotton gin instead of performing back breaking labor to raise and sow, and then cull and reap his own personal food needs.
The problem, in my opinion, is that we are currently striving for an extreme to each side. Some want us to be a socialist/collectivist blob that exists to service itself while some want us to all be pioneers striking out on our own as if we need no one and nothing to back us in any way, shape or form. Both are ridiculous. There are examples of both individualist and socialist/collectivist ideas that have turned out very bad. There are also examples of both that turned out very good. The best idea is to draw things as an engineer and use the most suitable tool for the job. International roadways? Socialist approach. Employment? Individualist approach. Climate change? It’s clearly an individualist solution – assuming that it is actually an issue to be confronted.

QV
August 18, 2015 4:19 am

“Countries founded on a powerful frontier mentality have this idea of limitless nature than can be endlessly extracted,” she said.
Surely she seems to be confusing two different things, i.e. alleged “climate change” and the finite nature of resources such as fossil fuels, as well as others, when the two are separate issues.
I don’t believe in (man made) “climate change” but I never-the-less, think that it would be unwise to go on using resources at an exponential rate until they run out,
without finding economic alternatives, whether it causes “climate change” or not.

Paul
Reply to  QV
August 18, 2015 4:28 am

“it would be unwise to go on using resources at an exponential rate until they run out”
Would they not be self-limiting? As scarcity drives up prices, the next best alternative(s) will fill the void. Trade in a whale oil lamp for an LED bulb. Hmm, was whale oil considered a renewable?

QV
Reply to  Paul
August 18, 2015 4:41 am

I also said “without finding economic alternatives”.
But I don’t think it can be assumed that market forces will find alternatives quickly enough.
There probably needs to be some forward planning.

schitzree
Reply to  Paul
August 18, 2015 7:20 am

Market forces CAN be forward planning. We didn’t need to run out of oil (or even go over the ‘peak’) before people started looking into alternatives. One of the most ridiculous beliefs of the peak oilers was that we would run short of oil so quickly that we wouldn’t have time to change our infrastructure. This despite the fact that more then half the vehicles on the road are replaced every decade. The only reason we aren’t changing them to electric, propane, whatever right now is because gas is still the cheapest. Once (IF) that changes the market will change swiftly with it. That’s what markets DO.

Reply to  Paul
August 18, 2015 9:06 am

For years now, diesel fuel has been a dollar or more per gallon more costly than gasoline. But recently, I have noted that it is actually the same price or less than regular unleaded.
I have wondered how and why this would/could be, and believe it may be related to the large number of big rig trucks that have been switching to nat gas or propane. And possibly also people trading in heating oil furnaces for gas as well.
It does not take much to affect the price…just get demand below supply, even by a little, and watch the price fall.
Ten years ago, the huge spike up was due to demand exceeding production capacity by a few percent or less.

Arsten
Reply to  Paul
August 18, 2015 10:20 am

menicholas,
A lot of the price increase a decade ago (actually about 12/14 years ago) is because of the ramp up to update refineries to produce ultra-low-sulfur diesel. This affected worldwide costs because anything that might touch American shores had to be ULS diesel, causing a lot of American-targeted refineries to update outside of our borders.
Ten years later, diesel is dropping because they have been able to pay off those refinery updates with the increased cost over the last ten years, so they can afford to be more competitive again at the pumps. Before the restrictive ULS mandates, diesel was actually consistently cheaper than gas because it is easier to refine.

Leonard Lane
Reply to  Paul
August 18, 2015 10:53 am

Much of he increase in diesel prices were driven by China. The Peoples Republic could not supply electricity to meet the manufacturing demand. So, many factories installed diesel generators and went ahead rather than waiting on the government.

R. Johnson
Reply to  Paul
August 18, 2015 11:32 am

Menicholas. Diesel fuel prices in my rather remote neck of the woods, went down significantly when Dakota Prairie refinery started producing diesel fuel from Bakken crude earlier this year. It is located near New Town ND and is on Tribal land, so no EPA of any other regulators to deal with. If someone from the US government shows up around New Town, the tribal police throw them out, or worse, if the rumors I hear are true. I think, but am not sure, it is the first new refinery to be built in the US in 40 years. So the local tribe now has a second large source of jobs and income, even more profitable than the Casino. I think it is a good example of the frontier spirit.

Dinsdale
Reply to  QV
August 18, 2015 6:43 am

The only way to find economic alternatives is to get government out of the way and let the market work. When (and if) so-called renewable energy sources actually save money over the current choices then they will win out. There is no need for “forward planning” by anyone other than entrepreneurs trying to make a fortune with new ideas.

QV
Reply to  Dinsdale
August 18, 2015 8:27 am

I too believe in markets, we have them to than for all of our wealth to date, but they are not perfect.

R. Johnson
Reply to  QV
August 18, 2015 12:06 pm

Sorry, I misspoke. The Fort Berthold tribal administrative center is in New Town, the refinery is SW of Dickenson. Plans were underway for two more refineries, but am not sure if that is still the case given the fall in oil prices.

Reply to  R. Johnson
August 18, 2015 1:09 pm

Actually won’t that make building a refinery more profitable? Lower feedstock price but same wholesale/retail price. Don’t know, but it seems to me that may be a solution for some restrictions on shipping crude. Ship refined products. Then what will the obstructionists driving their SUV Crossovers say?

Jaime Jessop
August 18, 2015 4:20 am

Clearly, Oz climate deniers are racist according to Klein because they show no consideration for their vulnerable Pacific ocean neighbours:
“Also, being a Pacific nation, your closest neighbours are facing a truly existential threat. So I find it even more shocking that Australia is a hotbed of climate denial.”
And climate change is about to make them even more racist:
“You see that in Australia where the treatment of migrants is a profound moral crisis,” she said. “It’s clear that as sea levels rise that this mean streak and open racism is going to become more extreme – climate change is an accelerant to all those other issues.”
Fits in well with the frontier mentality. This idea of ‘climate justice’ is becoming pervasive in climate ‘science’:
“Heat waves have become progressively more severe due to increasing relative humidity and nighttime temperatures, which increases the health risks of exposed communities, especially Latino farmworkers and other socioeconomically disadvantaged communities.”
Apparently, climatechange is not colour-blind, ergo ‘climate deniers’ must be racist – confirmed by the fact that they mostly derive from English speaking former colonies (of the British Empire). It’s all so obvious that scepticism about catastrophic man-made global warming is not rooted in scientific questioning but instead is driven by centuries old attitudes to other cultures and an opportunism based upon the belief that resources are infinite. So regressives should shut up and let progressives get on with the all-important job of saving the world.

Reply to  Jaime Jessop
August 18, 2015 9:10 am

What stands out to me is that people saying these things are oblivious to facts.
They take already disproven lies from years ago, and just run with them as facts…even years after a compleye debunking!
Many warmistas got their info so long ago, the crap they spout is not even wrong anymore.

empiresentry
Reply to  Jaime Jessop
August 18, 2015 11:38 am

Well said.
She spouts the leftist make believe history that America is a Colonial Regime. We have never taken anything and always turned any lands back while all other nations have always taken and still do. Exactly where are the Persians from and what were the names of those countries? Or why did human beings migrate out of Africa at the same time it turned into desert? Were they also climate change colonialists with frontier mentalities?
And, dearest Naomi, why is it that everyone wants to flee their countries and come to the US? Do they have frontier mentalities with a Colonialist disease?
What about China, Russia, the Middle East?
.
Given that climate change was a propaganda tool developed by an American to fill his pockets and backed by British university profs who had little funding except that from oil companies, her fallacy fails from the start.

Stephen Richards
August 18, 2015 4:31 am

What a nasty little turd she is. Unlike the aussies to put up with this kind of crap^.

John
August 18, 2015 4:35 am

Note to Naomi: The real reason is we think for ourselves, and are not led around like sheep and lemmings.

AB
Reply to  John
August 18, 2015 8:14 am

She has the Pope’s ear now. He might suggest a stint in a nunnery to toughen her up [in a non Shakespearean way of course working with Gaia in the gardens growing cabbages – in total silence – OMG]

AndrewS
Reply to  AB
August 18, 2015 9:06 am
August 18, 2015 4:39 am

It has been a long time since the UK needed any form of frontier mentality.
Perhaps when the Vikings, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, etc visited but I doubt they have much influence over current thought processes.
Oz, the US and Canada have much shorter histories of colonialism, but the UK?
If the use of the UK is for their expansionist efforts you would have to include the Dutch, Spanish, French and Portugese and even Kublai Khan et al if you go back far enough.

The Iconoclast
August 18, 2015 4:43 am

What’s great about Naomi Klein, depending on how you look at it, is how forthright she is about not really caring if AGW is real or not, that it’s useful in order to control people, restrict them and take their stuff in the name of social justice and whatnot.

Reply to  The Iconoclast
August 18, 2015 4:58 am

I suspect she will not be so forthright when advising the Pope.

herkimer
August 18, 2015 4:43 am

I can’t speak for the British or Australians but in North America the climate has been cooling for the last 20 years so there is limited or regional warming only. So you would have to be an alarmist and blind to the real weather to claim that significant global warming is happening here . We also have a better internet to get around the government data manipulation here. Europe has escaped the cold North American climate especially the winters .. Criticising the government and its science seems to be frowned up in Europe because of their fractured past and the personal risks one took to challenge the ruling government

John Law
Reply to  herkimer
August 18, 2015 4:53 am

I hope you are not including the UK in Europe as a political entity; the UK has a separate history to the mainland and a much more questioning attitude to government.

schitzree
Reply to  John Law
August 18, 2015 7:27 am

Well, they DID, anyway. And they might have it again.
Vote UKIP.

AP
August 18, 2015 4:58 am

Thank God we can think for ourselves! What is Klein proposing we do? Mindlessly accept what the proletariat tells us?

Reply to  AP
August 18, 2015 5:07 am

She would have us “…learn to love Big Brother.”

Brett Keane
Reply to  AP
August 18, 2015 5:34 pm

Er, no, it’s not the proletariat, but their would-be Mistress…

kim
August 18, 2015 5:01 am

It should be obvious to her. Those four countries share intelligence data.
===================

mairon62
August 18, 2015 5:08 am

It wasn’t that long ago when catastrophism was thought to be the main driver of geological “change”. It seems the CAGW crowd is simply rediscovering their antediluvian roots. Ah, the comfort of a fixed, immutable dogma in an uncertain world.

PiperPaul
August 18, 2015 5:09 am

Tilt-head forgot New Zealand.

North of 43 and south of 44
Reply to  PiperPaul
August 18, 2015 6:56 am

Give her a break, that is likely from spending all that time looking at the leaning tower there abouts.

Brett Keane
Reply to  PiperPaul
August 18, 2015 5:37 pm

Yep. it’s five eyes, not four, but why should we waste time trying to enlighten her?

george e. smith
Reply to  PiperPaul
August 18, 2015 9:51 pm

When that happens, we just hitch a ride on our Aussie mate’s coat tails.
So we threw ourselves in the there with the Yanks and the Canucks and the ” Genteel British “.
We like keeping good company.
g

Peyelut
August 18, 2015 5:10 am

Academic “Ideation” perceives imaginary Hobgoblins.

csanborn
August 18, 2015 5:15 am

Climate changes. That is what it does for a living. If it stopped, then we have problems (would probably mean it got lazy on gov’t well-fare program).

August 18, 2015 5:16 am

I’d reply to this, but I have to go out and clear some more brush and then shore up the half-faced camp before winter gits here.

Reply to  ELCore (@OneLaneHwy)
August 18, 2015 3:15 pm

ElCore: Me too. Have a couple of cords split and stacked with 4 to go to endure a winter’s supply. It snowed in the mountains last week and the last snow was the end of May. That may explain why the population of the U.S. Is ten times the population of the Great White North (Canada).
This is April 1, 2015 and no, it wasn’t an April Fool’s joke. Good thing I like snow: comment image?dl=0

Reply to  Wayne Delbeke
August 18, 2015 7:41 pm

Actually, I was being facetious.

Marty
August 18, 2015 5:16 am

Why does Naomi List to Starboard in the picture? Can’t anyone take a square on picture anymore? Is this supposed to make her look sexy, a Hag screaming about something no one in their right mind believes matters?
Just another book whore selling a scare. If it wasn’t Climate it would be some third world made up scare. These people can’t face reality. Facing today’s reality and not a far off make up boogy man, takes guts.
How about women’s rights in Muslim Nations? She won’t touch that one, along with all the other liberal loon women of the world, with a ten foot pole. How come??

Reply to  Marty
August 18, 2015 8:15 am

Leaning left.

Leonard Lane
Reply to  Marty
August 18, 2015 11:15 am

Progressives are cowards. They will rail and scream at the democratic nations. But, the Islamist fight back rather than tolerate the squalling. They want what they call “justice” (really totalitarian rule) but they want it on the cheap. Their philosophy is not worth really fighting for to obtain if their adversaries fight back. Then they run to the republics and democracies they hate for protection of their precious.

george e. smith
Reply to  Marty
August 18, 2015 10:02 pm

Careful now, you are slighting an important photographer.
BUT ! if you do tune out his(er) camera tilt, you find that Naomi still does have a head tilt, relative to her shoulders.
And it tilts to the right; no doubt from trying to block any conservative thought from reaching her ears.
Don’t tilt it too far Naomi, or everything will fall out, since there is little in the middle to stop it.

Marty
Reply to  george e. smith
August 19, 2015 5:28 am

When you google Ms. Klein and look at images all you get is head shots of her. She is a blooming Facebook freak. Ooooooo Look at meeeee! Phony

Charlie
August 18, 2015 5:18 am

Actually the worlds leading climate deniers ate countries likw China, Japan, and India. They aren’t denying anything. They have their own scientists which are just as good or better than ours. It’s typical for progressive elites to think they can talk about billions of people as if they know how they think or feel with no evidence of that but their own feelings and ego. Why do these people always feel the need to create victims and oppressors and self appointing themselves the savior without asking the supposed victims beforehand? I don’t understand these type of people. I only know they are horribly misled and completely phony.

Gary Hladik
Reply to  Charlie
August 18, 2015 10:37 am

My thoughts exactly. China was an empire long before the Brits began expanding. India was already densely populated when Europeans arrived. Perhaps Klein can explain how a “frontier mentality” made these folks climate heretics. Note that native Mandarin and Hindi speakers far outnumber native English speakers (English is actually fourth after Mandarin, Hindi, and Spanish):
http://www.vistawide.com/languages/top_30_languages.htm
Her blatant stupidity regarding her own thesis does not reflect well on the warmist camp as a whole. They would do well to excommunicate her.

Steve from Rockwood
August 18, 2015 5:19 am

The UK has a colony settler mentality? I think she made that one up to explain her idea. And she missed Norwegians and New Zealanders.
http://ecowatch.com/2015/07/07/country-most-climate-deniers/
Enjoy the link you male, conservative voters who are unconcerned about environmental issues 😉

M Seward
Reply to  Steve from Rockwood
August 18, 2015 8:44 pm

17%!!! Bulldust – there are more than that. But a win is a win and we love our sport and any other contest so what can I say but
Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi !!
Punching above out weight agqin!!
Thankyou folks, thankyou, thankyou.
You know we teally do like to make a contribution to making the world a better place which is why we took part in a number of wars against the forces of darkness and this is just one of the current set.
We would like to thank our founding fathers for our frontier mentality of pragmatism and connection to the earth blah blah blah…..

PA
August 18, 2015 5:19 am

According to wiki:”Social progressives believe that some historical mores are wrong or dogmatic and that present knowledge gained from science and philosophy has disproved many traditional beliefs.”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dangerous-ideas/201002/psychology-progressive-purposes
Social progressives believe they are smarter than you are, your stupidity is harming people, and things must be done their way.
There used to be negative articles on progressivism from the psychological community. Published by people like John Hopkins press:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2710328?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
It is pretty clear that if 40% of psychologists were conservative instead of 1:260 more or less the progressive/liberal movement would get excoriated regularly.
http://againstpolitics.com/2011/10/20/the-psychology-of-liberalism/
About 35% of liberal/progressives will do whatever it takes to frustrate the career aspirations of conservatives.
This is how psychology, law, news, much of academia, much of science, and government bureaucracy got hijacked.
Without this hijacking progressivism/liberalism with its relative lack of honesty, ethics, morals and a requirement for deception to advance its agenda would not get good press.
Engineering and business – areas where reality checks your work are relatively immune to being overrun by progressives – which is why progressives use the institutions they have hijacked to make these groups dance to their tune.
The claim of “frontier mentality” and the claimant aren’t accurate or honest but the voices in her field that should be castigating her were silenced quite a while ago.
It is what it is. Social progressism/liberalism is the sort of intolerant inflexible dishonest attitude we wouldn’t tolerate in a 3 year old and shouldn’t tolerate in adults.

Reply to  PA
August 18, 2015 6:53 am

It may be that your business doesn’t accept the conclusion of 99.9% of peer-reviewed science papers (jamespowell.org) or 97 % of actively publishing climate researchers (climate.nasa.gov) , but my Fortune 200 corporate employer does, as do most corporations including the large integrated oil companies such as Chevron and Exxon. Furthermore, a growing number of Republican leaders want to see action as well: republicen.org.
This Conservative Republican believes that Rejection of the conclusions of science is an attitude that belongs in the Dark Ages.

David Chappell
Reply to  warrenlb
August 18, 2015 8:16 am

“This Conservative Republican believes that Rejection of the conclusions of science is an attitude that belongs in the Dark Ages.”
So you accept that AGW is nothing but a scam then?

Reply to  warrenlb
August 18, 2015 8:58 am

What exactly does you company state in terms of this mythical 99%%? If they have a statement it must be public so where is it? I work for a Fortune 50 company and we don’t have one.

Reply to  warrenlb
August 18, 2015 9:05 am

@chilemike. Re-read my post. I never said my company stated anything about 99.9% I said they accepted the conclusions of science. I provided a link to the study that showed 99.9% of peer-reviewed scientific papers concluded or supported AGW.
What do your executives think the science concludes?

Tim
Reply to  warrenlb
August 18, 2015 9:06 am

The conclusions of whose science? ‘Actively publishing’ simply means ‘actively funded’.
https://youtu.be/w4hbKF5-qUE

Reply to  warrenlb
August 18, 2015 9:32 am

warrenlb says:
I provided a link to the study that showed 99.9% of peer-reviewed scientific papers concluded or supported AGW.
Misdirection, as usual.
Not many readers here dispute that AGW exists. But that is such a nebulous statement that it is meaningless except as alarmist propaganda.
AGW has never been measured; global warming as a result of human CO2 emissions is far too minuscule to measure. AGW has has never been quantified, out of total warming from all sources including the natural recovery of the planet from the LIA.
I’ll trump warrenlb’s “99.9%” (a phony number anyway) with this: 100.0% of scientists have failed to produce even one testable, verifiable measurement quantifying the degree of AGW, out of all global warming. Thus, AGW is a measurement-free conjecture; an opinion, nothing more.

PA
Reply to  warrenlb
August 18, 2015 2:26 pm

warrenlb August 18, 2015 at 9:05 am
@chilemike. Re-read my post. I never said my company stated anything about 99.9% I said they accepted the conclusions of science. I provided a link to the study that showed 99.9% of peer-reviewed scientific papers concluded or supported AGW.
What do your executives think the science concludes?

Well, that could be your problem – you are polling your executives rather than asking smart people.
The engineering staff is probably pretty skeptical about global warming.
Anthropogenic forcing is about 1 W/m2 other things and 1 W/m2 GHG. We know the GHG is 1 W/m2 ’cause we measured it. This means all other claimed “AGW” is due to a non-GHG causes and reducing CO2 will have no impact. A quick computation assuming the 3% urban area is asphalt instead of grass (about a 50 w/m2 difference since asphalt has no latent heat loss) gives around 1.6 W/m2 of UHI. So the non-GHG human influences are obviously in the 1 W/m2 or better ball park.
The projected growth in fossil fuel emissions is just crazy and demonstrates complete ignorance of reality and basic economics.
At the end of the day we have
1 W/m2 CGAGW (0.23 °C) CGAGW (computer generated anthropomorphic global warming – also known as “virtual” warming).
1 W/m2 natural influences, mostly solar.
1 W/m2 Non-GHG AGW
1 W/m2 AGW.
It is what it is. 3 W/m2 = 4 W/m2 – 1 W/m2. 0.7 to 0.8°C. As much as government staffs enjoy waterboarding data to make it confess, virtual warming isn’t real. It might be up to 0.5°C warmer in 2100. On the other hand it might not be warmer at all.
Next time ask your technical staff instead of random people from meetings or people whom you bump into in the corridor.

Reply to  warrenlb
August 18, 2015 4:24 pm

@PA
Sorry old chap, but I was VP of Engineering, not in the executive suite, and my organization understood AGW and carried out programs to reduce GHG emissions. No Engineer, or executive, with an ounce of brains believed that Denier cr**p.

Reply to  warrenlb
August 18, 2015 5:50 pm

As usual warrenlb has not said anything worthwhile in his last post. He still cannot produce a single measuremewnt quantifying AGW. Not one of his alarmist pals’ predictions has ever happened. And Planet Earth is busy debunking everything he’s been trying to sell us.
He looks like someone trying to convince skeptics that Scientology is the same as science.
And ‘conservative Republican’?? IANAR, but that sounds like Satan quoting Scripture.

Reply to  warrenlb
August 18, 2015 6:43 pm

Warren – your comment looks like an appeal to authority to me. I can disprove your hypothesis with one example. I was VP of a major consulting engineering company and I don’t buy CAGW and never did. My degree was in pollution and water resources. Most “executives” in my company don’t buy CAGW either but that doesn’t mean we don’t do consulting for people that do. I’ve been retired for 13 years so the culture of my old company may have changed, but if you read here much (and you do), you will know very well that a lot of applied science folks are skeptical as many of us were trained to be … along with training in geology, weather and climate. “It only takes one ..,”

Reply to  warrenlb
August 19, 2015 8:34 am

Executives as a general rule care more about PR than they do about facts.

PA
Reply to  PA
August 18, 2015 8:00 am

Well, gee, I’m sorry conservative republicans have lost the ability to deal with facts in a clear and rational way and are now making decisions by consensus.
A consensus is an animal with thousands of arms and legs but no brain.
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2015/02/25/co2-greenhouse-effect-increase/
1. Only study to measure forcing 22 PPM, 0.2 W/m2. The change since 1900 is 105 PPM. If we divide 0.2 W/m2 by 22 and multiple by 105 we get 0.955 W/m2 or 0.26°C of CO2 forcing since 1900. Since it is logarithmic the change is actually 1.05 W/m2 and 0.28°C but still small potatoes. The claimed forcing of around 3 W/m2 and 0.86°C is fictional.
What global warmers just can’t seem to wrap their heads around is empirical measurement trumps models absolutely. Reality trumps virtual reality every time.
2. 1977 fossil fuel emissions were 5.02 and the CO2 increase exceeded 2 PPM for the first time. Average was a 1.7 PPM/Y CO2 increase. With double the emissions the rate of increase in CO2 should be 3.4 PPM. The IPCC RCP8.5 scenario (written in 2011, updated in 2013) claims 2.6 PPM/Y increase in 2015 and 3.0 PPM/Y in 2020.
The reality is the CO2 increase is going to be about the same as 1977. About 2 PPM. The same as when emissions were 1/2 the level of modern emissions. The record 2.93 PPM/Y occurred 17 years ago before a 50% increase in emissions.
In 2020 assuming CO2 emissions stay under 11.5 GT/Y, the rate of CO2 increase won’t be 3.0 or 3.8, it will be around 2.0 PPM just like it is today. If emissions stay at 10 GT/Y the CO2 increase will be less than 2.0 PPM/Y in 2020 because environmental absorption is steadily increasing.
3. Reserves are 760 GT (76 years at today’s rate of consumption). Only about 50% of reserves are usable. But we will assume new discoveries etc. give us 760 GT to play with. We only have 76 years. If we steadily increase emissions to keep the annual CO2 increase at 2 PPM/Y we run out in about 40 years.
480 PPM is pretty much all the CO2 level can be increased with available fossils fuels. And then we are dry and the CO2 level drops at 8-10 PPM/Y. Talking about ECS is just absurd. 100 years from now the CO2 level will be lower than today. ECS applies to century long times scales and there isn’t a change in hell CO2 will be elevated that long.
4. CO2 benefits. More CO2 has increased plant growth 55% since 1900. That is $1 trillion plus dollars per year just from fish, farm, and forest in benefits to mankind. Plus more CO2 reduces water consumption by plants. Irrigation water is a significant problem and more CO2 may be the only way to stave off water wars. Maintaining elevated levels of atmospheric CO2 will be the difference between starvation or plenty for future populations.
There literally isn’t any harm that could exceed the mass starvation of billions. The global warmers haven’t demonstrated any significant harm from more CO2 at all, they haven’t demonstrated any significant harm from a 2°C temperature increase, and since CO2 which has been measured to cause 0.2 W/m2 of forcing for 22 PPM, isn’t going to cause more than 1 W/m2 of forcing in 2100 under reasonable assumptions so the whole discussion is academic.
There is a case we should be trying to prosecute the global warmers who want to limit our CO2, starve the plants, and leave future populations the choice of dying from thirst or starvation.

Reply to  PA
August 18, 2015 9:00 am

@Well gee, it seems you’ve raised the nuttiest point of all time. Of course Science is never ‘done by consensus’, but instead the consensus of scientists about AGW, F=ma, relativity, DNA, Evolution, or Plate Tectonics is reached when their research converges on an understanding of the physical world. By your logic, you’d reject all conclusive findings of modern day science!

Reply to  PA
August 18, 2015 9:10 am

warrenlb completely ignores all the facts posted above because he is fixated on the “consensus” argument. He still insists, against all the evidence, that a ‘consensus’ exists supporting the ‘dangerous man-made global warming’ (MMGW) narrative.
But we have shown conclusively that the dangerous MMGW “consensus” (for whatever consensus is worth in science; not much) is heavily on the side of skeptics of that debunked claim.
The alarmist clique is mortified by the fact that they cannot get even a few dozen of their scientists to publicly contradict the more than THIRTY THOUSAND scientists and engineers who have refuted the MMGW scare.
There was never a consensus that any dangerous MMGW exists. But the alarmist cult is fixated on that belief. They come up with endless, illogical talking points to argue with, but the fact is:
32,487 vs ≤ 100. Skeptics of dangerous MMGW are the consensus.

PA
Reply to  PA
August 18, 2015 10:32 am

Martin Clark August 18, 2015 at 9:26 am
Warrenlb, don’t be fooled by the strawman “dangerous” that dbstealey mentions. The science does not label AGW as “safe” nor does it label it as “dangerous.”

Well… science doesn’t label AGW as safe or unsafe.
However:
The IPCC RCP8.5 (representative concentration pathway) which is the RCP closest to the current situation has 940 PPM in 2100. To get to 940 PPM in 2100 the rate would have average 6.35 PPM/Y and be around
10.7 in 2100.
The emissions history (remember we only have 76 years of fossil fuel at current consumption rates):
1977 average CO2 increase is 1.7 GT/Y with 5 GT/Y of emissions
2015 average CO2 increase is 2.1 GT/Y (this will be the third year at around 2.1 PPM/Y) with about 10 GT/Y of emissions.
2100 average CO2 increase to meet RCP8.5 is 10.7 PPM/Y, the amount of fossil fuel emissions needed to achieve this is ???. And fuel will come from where ??? At what cost ???
Global warmers tell us that renewables are competitive now and will be cheaper in the future. Fossil fuel is getting steadily more expensive as easily accessible deposits are consumed. But global warmers also make these future charts that require several times the current fossil fuel consumption to produce the emissions needed for disastrous warming, despite having “cheaper” renewables available. So the question is: are global warmers lying to us now or are they lying about the future. Or both.
Because of gate keeping, and EPA/NSF bias the most published authors are global warmers. Surveying the most published authors doesn’t give a realistic results. The PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency study, which had a biased selection criteria and only a 1/3 participation rate says that only 58% of the majority (95-98%) of climate scientists believe CO2 causes a majority of the warming.
An unbiased survey of climate scientists wouldn’t even turn up a majority for CO2 as the dominant climate influence.

Reply to  PA
August 18, 2015 1:38 pm

Martin Clark says:
…don’t be fooled by the strawman “dangerous” that dbstealey mentions.
I’ve been waiting for someone to take the bait.
The explicit narrative has always been that an increase in human CO2 emissions will cause runaway global warming, which will lead to climate catastrophe.
The reason for telling the public that CO2 is dangerous is clear: if scientists admitted what the evidence shows — that there has been no global harm from the rise in CO2 — then there would be no way to scare the public into opening its collective wallets. So they must sound the alarm with the message that human emissions will cause dangerous warming.
Next, as PA says, the rise in CO2 has been beneficial to the biosphere. No one who understands the subject denies that fact. The planet is measurably greening as a direct result of more CO2. So the situation is exactly the opposite of what the alarmist crowd has been predicting. They were simply wrong.
If people like Profs Feynman, Popper, Langmuir, Haldane and other great scientists were here today, they would scoff at the complete absence of the Scientific Method. Scientists on the gov’t payroll completely ignore the process:
As Charles Davis says:
Hypothesis: CO2 will cause runaway warming.
Experiment: Let the CO2 continue to increase 20 years.
Result: No warming.
Conclusion: The hypothesis is incorrect.

A thousand expert opinions, experiments and studies are not enough to prove a hypothesis. But all it takes is one wrong prediction to falsify it.
Most readers here agree that CO2 emissions are the cause of some global warming. But that is not the debate. The debate is clearly about whether human emissions will result in anything dangerous. The real world has given its answer: No.
All available evidence indicates that more CO2 will be a net benefit. The science is never settled, but after fifty years of looking for global harm from CO2 and finding none, the question is settled enough to stop wasting any more taxpayer money on “AGW”. There are far more important things that really do need fixing.

Science or Fiction
Reply to  PA
August 19, 2015 1:51 pm

It seems like you have some important considerations here.
There are quite many important figures in your comment.
As I´m a quite lazy guy – do you happen to have a link to a version with references?

PA
Reply to  PA
August 19, 2015 3:04 pm

Science or Fiction August 19, 2015 at 1:51 pm
It seems like you have some important considerations here.
There are quite many important figures in your comment.
As I´m a quite lazy guy – do you happen to have a link to a version with references?

http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2015/02/25/co2-greenhouse-effect-increase/
11 years, 0.2 W/m2, 22 PPM.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/Global_Carbon_Project/Global_Carbon_Budget_2014_v1.1.xlsx
Emissions etc.
3000GT CO2/760 GT Carbon are the commonly quoted figures for fossil fuel reserves (divide by 3.67).
If you look at recovery from reserves it is 50-90% and some of the reserves are off limits/inaccessible (0% recoverable)..
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50563/abstract
1982-2010, 14% more CO2, 11% more plant growth.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
The estimates for the 20th century were running about 50% But we know the 1982-2010 trend was 11%.
1982 CO2 – 341
2000 CO2 – 370
2010 CO2 – 390
2015 CO2 – 400
So about 5% of the growth from the study occurred in the 21th century (net 55% increased growth) and if brought up to the current 400 PPM would be about 63%.
CO2 enrichment is a proven fact. The effort to disprove it is irrational cultish behavior.
http://www.hydroponicist.com/pages/images/CO2-graph.gifcomment image

Science or Fiction
Reply to  PA
August 20, 2015 10:11 am

Great 🙂 Thanks.

Say What?
August 18, 2015 5:22 am

A frontier mentality opened up North America. North America became the food basket of the world. Millions if not billions have been saved by American aid over the years. I think we need more of frontier mentality. Instead of worrying about what might happen or what someone is trying to tell you might happen, you just get on with living and deal with every crisis that arrives. It’s fine to look ahead but impossible to see clearly through the fog of political bull. The frontiers people knew how to survive and didn’t whimper about it as much as today’s “civilized” experts seem to.

August 18, 2015 5:23 am

Many of most hysterical alarmists come for same countries which is why most of reaction is in these countries. Mann, Lewandovsky, Cook, Klein even.

Bruce Cobb
August 18, 2015 5:24 am

“Countries founded on a powerful frontier mentality have this idea of limitless nature than can be endlessly extracted”.
She’s making it up as she goes along. Firstly, “nature that can be extracted” makes no sense. She’s talking gibberish. Secondly, in her garbled, confused way, she seems to be referring to the concept of Malthusianism, the idea that we humans are using up resources faster than is sustainable, which really has nothing to do with the CAGW religion which we skeptics/climate realists “deny”.

Eugene WR Gallun
Reply to  Bruce Cobb
August 18, 2015 6:23 am

Bruce Cobb — To borrow a phrase from the left — RIGHT ON! — Eugene WR Gallun

Tim
Reply to  Bruce Cobb
August 18, 2015 8:46 am

“…she seems to be referring to the concept of Malthusianism”
Or the concept of Eco journalism which provides far more profit.
It’s sad that people of intellect can be convinced to trade their integrity and join a tribe that is perceived to be strong and dominant. Maybe they even try to convince themselves that it is the correct choice.

Science or Fiction
Reply to  Bruce Cobb
August 18, 2015 1:20 pm

When it comes to CO2 – humans are actually adding this valuable resource to the natural cycle.

Vic Veron
August 18, 2015 5:31 am

Klein: “The rest of Europe has a keener sense of boundaries – they’ve lived against the limits of nature for longer.”
And they placed their pioneer spirit into the world of ideas, bringing about The Renaissance.
“The term Renaissance, literally means “rebirth” and is the period in European civilization immediately following the Middle Ages, conventionally held to have been characterized by a surge of interest in classical learning and values. The Renaissance also witnessed the discovery and exploration of new continents, the substitution of the Copernican for the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, the decline of the feudal system and the growth of commerce, and the invention or application of such potentially powerful innovations as paper, printing, the mariner’s compass, and gunpowder. To the scholars and thinkers of the day, however, it was primarily a time of the revival of classical learning and wisdom after a long period of cultural decline and stagnation.”
-R. A. Guisepi

cheshirered
August 18, 2015 5:32 am

They always have to have their own approved right-on liberal ‘explanation’ for everything don’t they?
Hey, Naomi, maybe it’s simply because the majority of Canadians, Aussies, British and yes, even Yanks, are actually in possession of their critical faculties, have studied the ‘evidence’ for cAGW and having found it utterly wanting have concluded that catastrophic climate change theory is simply an indefensible croc of ****.

Latitude
August 18, 2015 5:36 am

What she’s saying is true…
Socialism is a step up for cultures that came from kings…
..and socialism is a step down for cultures that came from independence

Vic Veron
Reply to  Latitude
August 18, 2015 7:20 am

+1

urederra
Reply to  Latitude
August 18, 2015 8:09 am

And countries lile Cuba or North Korea bave become an inheritable communism.
I don’t know if that is a step up, down or sideways.

g2-9ed9acc685824c6663c51c5b093476cc
August 18, 2015 5:43 am

It’s simpler than that.
People in “the developing world” aren’t focused on “fixing the climate” (what an absurd statement).
They are focused on wealth transfer.
And people in those countries cited know who’s going to be paying.

John Silver
August 18, 2015 5:45 am

Stop feeding this goddamn troll, will you!

August 18, 2015 5:45 am

A person who has a self-reliant attitude knows that he can assess a set of facts with sufficient competency that he can know how to proceed. This of course frees him from being dependent upon the control and opinion of others. It destroys the ability of the progressive hive-mind to influence his actions, which is why they speak the way the do towards self reliance and personal initiative.
Socialism is far more than just the ideology that society will be more equitable when we all live at the expense of everyone else. It is the smothering ideology that the only opinions that a person should have are those who are the opinions that society as a whole approves of. This is the hive-mind in action. Any thought that didn’t come from the hive-mind diminishes the power of the hive-mind. The socialist world view is that society will be more equitable when we each only think based on what everyone else is thinking. Socialists not only work at stealing all your material assets, they must also try to steal all your spiritual assets as well.

herkimer
August 18, 2015 5:51 am

I am a little surprised that these comments came from a Canadian who clearly is unaware of the climate in her own country and why many do not believe in man induced global warming . When you get 18 feet of snow in the winter like Prince Edward Island received this past winter and half of Canada had the coldest temperatures ever recorded in most Eastern Provinces and the 10 Eastern US states, you would understand why they reject man induced global warming. Do your home work Naomi. Your theories are naïve and poorly researched.

john robertson
Reply to  herkimer
August 18, 2015 11:22 am

What she is canadian?
Inconcievable.
Actually I am pretty sure that is a photo of David Suzuki, AKA Dr Fruit Fly, in drag.
Naomi is a classic parasite , pontificating into the mirror.
Message to Naomi; I too despise what you see in your mirror.

PA
Reply to  herkimer
August 18, 2015 11:55 am

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Klein
“Naomi Klein (born May 8, 1970) is a Canadian author, social activist, and filmmaker known for her political analyses and criticism of corporate globalization and of corporate capitalism.”
Well. She is Canadian (at least it isn’t our fault). Obviously a progressive gadfly (no reasoning skills and a lack of technical expertise).
Background appropriate to discussing climate: spent much of teenage years in shopping malls, went to UofT but didn’t graduate.
Please remind me why her viewpoint is relevant?

Chris Hanley
Reply to  herkimer
August 18, 2015 2:14 pm

That’s probably why most Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border.

Komrade Kuma
August 18, 2015 6:04 am

Pity about the UK not exactly having all those wide open spaces and actual waves of settlers with endless expansion fantasies for the past thousand years or so. Typical CAGWarmist, fineagling the facts again to squeeze into a confected narrative. What the four nations noted do have in common, and we should add the New Zealanders to the list I suppose , in case this twit had not noticed, is a common language, democratic system, political, cultural and investment links such that we readily see, hear and understand the discourse that is happening in each other’s country. We are just old acquaintances and friends with family ties so what do you expect. Nothing to do with some “settler” fantasy although “settlers” are nothing if not pragmatists and realists.
As for the cat thing some wrote about above, it probably comes from the lips pursed in self importance, just like a cats sphincter as it swishes down the street, tail in the air.

Komrade Kuma
August 18, 2015 6:13 am

PS
So Naomi, you reckon the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch and the French don’t have that “settler” thing going for them too? The Chinese are pretty optimistic too and they sure get around as did the Turks in their day, the Germans and the Danes / Norwegians. Wot the heck, the Swedes got out into what is now Russia – in fact they are “The Rus”! And the Jews, they are the champs at settling wide open and all sorts of spaces. Now there is a pragmatic people.
Gee whiz, a lot of people sure do get around now you mention it.
I note you never graduated from university, Naomi. Sorry to tell you this but it shows.

James Strom
August 18, 2015 6:16 am

Er, I’d like to see her data to back up these claims.
Meanwhile, consider a little anecdotal evidence on nations which have treated nature as a resource to be exploited without remorse: the Soviet Union, China, Haiti, and Indonesia, to name a few. Bunch of Brits.

Frosty
August 18, 2015 6:17 am

What does she expect, WUWT is only published in English!

RoHa
August 18, 2015 6:18 am

This sort of cod psychology is an even bigger load of bollocks than the wurfling about socialist conspiracies that is so common in the comments section.
Aside from anything else, and as several posters have noted, the UK does not have a frontier mentality. It has been fully settled for a few thousand years.

JohnWho
August 18, 2015 6:21 am

“Klein said the denial of climate science…”
Well, except it is she and her ilk who don’t accept the proper application of science regarding climate.
By the way, while you are all here, let’s see a show of hands: who here “denies climate”?
*looks around, sees no hands raised*
There you go – she is not talking about any of us.

August 18, 2015 6:22 am

Is not wind “nature that can be extracted”? Is not sun shine “nature that can be extracted”? I just want to extract different things.

JohnWho
August 18, 2015 6:23 am

I think many here are forgetting one important thing:
back in the “frontier” days, the climate didn’t change.
/sarc

Owen
August 18, 2015 6:39 am

Klein is a antidemocratic sociopathic hag who is miserable because she wasn’t born in Stalin’s communist utopia. She’s trying to recreate it by using the false story the planet is burning up. If she gets her way the climate ‘deniers’ will end up in re-education camps or slave labour gulags.

Pamela Gray
August 18, 2015 6:47 am

Naomi makes two mistakes in her interpretation of skepticism.
We have oral histories of climate change back through our ancestors who faced such devastation. City dwellers may be more protected from that devastation (or not like in the case of San Francisco and other lit up cities of the past). Just ask a dust bowl dweller or their children who are still alive. That oral history is pretty damn accurate and records the severe regional scale affects of global climate regime shifts.
Which leads to the second mistake. We are not afraid at all of what climate change may do to rural food productivity, and forest products. In fact, we are more prepared for it than urban and metropolitan folks are.
To wit, I have nothing but laughter for city dwellers with money buying river front property, and paying for flood plain insurance. I have nothing but respect for farmers (who’s house is in a protected rock outcropping area, not sitting on valuable pasture), who know all too well that a river will meander within that flood plain, silting up here and gouging there, regardless of gooperment riprap and oh so carefully placed river log along the river bank and in the bed.
Country folks with pioneer ancestry will mitigate climate effects, even welcome the drought, flood, or freeze that will surely come again, all the while battling what is truly the devastating event: gooberment intervention.
Naomi knows not what she speaks of, nor where her plate of food or the house she dwells in, come from.

Bruce Cobb
August 18, 2015 6:49 am

Clueless Klein asks; “Is Capitalism now at war with our planet?”
Aside from the idiotic idea of a “war on the planet” itself, this clearly shows the proclivities and motivations of the Warmunist crowd. “The Science” is simply a means to an end, and for them, “the ends justify the means”.
These people (if you can call them that) are actually at war with humanity.

NateM
August 18, 2015 6:53 am

Maybe “the reason Americans, British, Australians and Canadians are the world’s leading “climate deniers” is because the best skeptic website, WUWT is pretty much mostly written in English.

August 18, 2015 6:55 am

>>The rest of Europe has a keener sense of boundaries – they’ve lived against the limits of nature for longer.<<
Once again, a North American liberal compares North Americans to Europeans and finds the Northern Americans somehow wanting. Notice her sweeping generalizations and stereotyping here, and how she seems to conveniently ignore that North Americans originally WERE Europeans now only a few generations removed from the old world. Somehow it makes them a separate class of people. She also conveniently forgets how Europeans with their "keener sense of boundaries" brought the world the expansionist, "enlightened," totalitarian regimes of Communism and Nazism that destroyed millions of lives during the last century.
Naomi is a liberal boob who believes in dangerous fairy tales, many of which she has invented out of her own scrambled psyche. Humans are humans the world over and are not well served by Klein's divisive, simplistic, stereotypical thinking.

Eugene WR Gallun
August 18, 2015 6:55 am

Socialism is the evil Santa who will put a ration coupon in everybody stocking. (Cartoon image for Josh?)
Socialist theory is a fantasy requiring constant lying to enforce its “reality”. We should not let others force their fantasies upon us. In often repeated words — don’t let the lunatics run the asylum.
Kowtowing before consensus and kowtowing before authority are exactly the same thing.
Eugene WR Gallun

August 18, 2015 7:01 am

Examination of the Venusian atmosphere causes denial. It’s a condition called “incontrovertible evidence”!

Mike the Morlock
August 18, 2015 7:05 am

Perhaps Naomi Klein might take a history class or two. She may learn that of the 102 souls, on the Mayflower 45 perished by the first thanksgiving. Also a visit to the Plymouth Village would be in order, just to get an idea as to how hard life was.
michael

Tim
August 18, 2015 7:21 am

Every time I see the word DENIER, I think PAYROLL.

RACookPE1978
Editor
Reply to  Tim
August 18, 2015 7:48 am

Tim

Every time I see the word DENIER, I think PAYROLL.

Odd comment. Do you mean the government-paid professional Climate Deniers who are funded by their 31 billions a year in “climate research” budgets?
Or the 1.3 trillions in new taxes their politicians want so desperately?
Or their bankers and businesses seeking their share of 31 trillion in carbon trading futures?

Tim
Reply to  RACookPE1978
August 18, 2015 8:15 am

All of the above.

observa
August 18, 2015 7:25 am

“The rest of Europe has a keener sense of boundaries – they’ve lived against the limits of nature for longer.”
Who’da ever thunk Lebensraum was such an important portent of global warming amid all those tree rings, ice layers and sediments of Europe eh?

Ralph Kramden
August 18, 2015 7:25 am

If you can’t attack the message, attack the messenger. I think that’s all the Warmists can do.

JAB
August 18, 2015 7:35 am

Sounds like she is describing characteristics that allowed the English speaking democracies to avoid the various statist “isms” that made the 20th century so bloody. Property rights, rule of law, representative government all militate against statist remedies to the products of exhalation.

Jim Pacheco
August 18, 2015 7:37 am

How does she explain climate denying (by thier actions not words) China?

Ed Zuiderwijk
August 18, 2015 7:39 am

As a Dutchman I feel the odd one out. Help!

tom peer
August 18, 2015 7:43 am

If we include the second most skeptic country, Norway, in the list, I wonder if there any other factors that might influence climate skepticism:
http://www.russellsage.org/sites/all/files/chartbook/Fig10_Comparative.png
No confounding factors there then, Naomi.

knr
August 18, 2015 7:44 am

Oddly China and Indian and most of the far east and Africa are no ‘fans ‘ of CAGW either , expect when they after some guilt cash. So how does she explain that , well that is easy ‘evil west bad ‘ everyone else good. Although like many that endlessly talk about the ‘evil west ‘ they would not live anywhere else , especially not in any of the ‘socialists paradises’ which they prise sing for , from a ‘distance’

Doug Bunge
August 18, 2015 7:49 am

There may be some correlation there, but I can assure you that not all deniers are “rape the earth for all it’s worth” types. Some of us just seek truth. Just because coal is dirty and fracking isn’t without it’s pitfalls, doesn’t mean I’m going to exaggerate the CO2 impact on the environment in order to exert control.

August 18, 2015 7:58 am

Her comparison of the New World to Europe’s “keener sense of boundaries” reminds me of one of the best monologues in film spoken by James Garner in The Americanization of Emily:
You American-haters bore me to tears, Miss Barham. I’ve dealt with Europeans all my life. I know all about us parvenus from the States who come over here and race around your old cathedral towns with our cameras and Coca-Cola bottles… Brawl in your pubs, paw your women, and act like we own the world. We over-tip. We talk too loud. We think we can buy anything with a Hershey bar.
I’ve had Germans and Italians tell me how politically ingenuous we are. And perhaps so. But we haven’t managed a Hitler or Mussolini yet. I’ve had Frenchmen call me a savage because I only took half an hour for lunch. Hell, Miss Barham, the only reason the French take two hours for lunch is because the service in their restaurants is lousy. The most tedious lot are you British. We crass Americans didn’t introduce war into your little island. This war, Miss Barham, to which we Americans are so insensitive, is the result of 2,000 years of European greed, barbarism, superstition, and stupidity. Don’t blame it on our Coca-Cola bottles. Europe was a going brothel long before we came to town.

August 18, 2015 7:58 am

In addition to the several good points already made, one factor is probably that the bulk of literature that takes a serious skeptical look at the “science” behind climate alarmism is in English (this blog, for example). That might also explain the Scandinavian countries because of the very high number of fluent English speakers in those countries.

David Wells
August 18, 2015 8:07 am

My Sister lives on Ontario and her experience argues against Canada reflecting the views of Tony Abbot: “We are in election Mode over here the election is not until October 19th mean while the radio and newspapers are full of it and the thing is our newspapers are very left wing they drive me crazy We have Justin Trudeau very left wing who is an absolute dimwit one of his famous comments is the budget will balance its self wants to raise taxes on the high income earners and give it to the poor and middle class of course his father was P.M he almost bankrupt Canada, then we have Tom Mulcair who is N.D.P which is extreme left he wants to give all parents $15.00 a day daycare that would bankrupt the country and close down the oil sands these two get all the publicity and our current P.M who is conservative gets hardly any publicity unless the media can find something that they think will harm his chances of re election at which point he is front page and the worst picture of him that they can find of him
The Ontario Provincial government is in so much debt it doesn’t know which way to turn to get more money out of Ontarians They are wasting billions on these bloody windmills and solar panels and the amount of power they produce is negligible but the thing is the liberal government is paying them for energy they are not producing ( correction our hydro bills keep going up to pay for phantom energy ) these windmill have a life span of approx 20 years the cost to take them down will be horrendous and the thing is the farmers that rent out the land will have to pay for the removal the greenies are so bloody stupid all these windmills and solar panel are made from oil by products reckon if you open there heads they would be full of foam
The whole bloody world is going crazy

schitzree
Reply to  David Wells
August 18, 2015 11:30 am

David, the period is your freind. Use it. ^¿^
I’m not even disagreeing with you, that was just a massive run on double paragraph.

Zeke
Reply to  David Wells
August 18, 2015 8:00 pm

No, it was brilliant and needs no editing.

Rob Dawg
August 18, 2015 8:10 am

” Naomi Klein will speak at Melbourne writers festival on 29 and 30 August and the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Sydney on 5 September.”
Will she able to sail there in time?

Reply to  Rob Dawg
August 18, 2015 8:21 am

At the risk of making a sweeping generalization, she’ll probably take her broom.

Bruce Cobb
Reply to  Max Photon
August 18, 2015 10:15 am

Good idea. Easier to grasp at straws.

knr
Reply to  Rob Dawg
August 18, 2015 8:30 am

Now you know its ‘different’ when they do the very thing that attack others for doing .

Jim G1
August 18, 2015 8:19 am

Urban populations vote democrat and are seeking to have the government, their employer or whomever take care of them. Rural and small town folks not so much. Densly populated areas have climates much more effected by the population than do rural areas. Urban areas are much more propagandized by AGW sources than rural areas such as left wing newspapers, tv and radio. They want gun control, higher minimum wages, open borders, etc because they are told to want them. Global warming alarmism or climate change or whatever it is now called fits their world view. Rural folks, not so much.

RH
August 18, 2015 8:25 am

You could cut and paste that article into The Onion, and it would be funny. What’s not funny is that idiots like Klein are given serious consideration.

Louis Hunt
August 18, 2015 8:26 am

What a surprise! Australia, Canada, the US, and the UK are all countries expected to pay trillions in climate reparations. Why would other countries that expect to receive a windfall from climate change come out openly against the idea?

Eustace Cranch
August 18, 2015 8:26 am

We are insufficiently subservient to the authority of our betters.
Simple as that.

Reply to  Eustace Cranch
August 18, 2015 10:34 am

That’s exactly what King George said about 245 years ago.

CEH
August 18, 2015 8:40 am

Isn´t the human brain amazing, those who have kept the “frontier mentality” has also kept the inquisitiveness alive, whereas those who have wandered off to the “mental frontier” always seems to despise the inquisitive mind of others to the point they have to try belittle them, or do they feel belittled themselves because they have lost their own inquisitive mind and is now no more than an echo chamber.

Coach Springer
August 18, 2015 8:41 am

To paraphrase Ms. Klein: You’ve got to have a hive mentality to buy this load.

August 18, 2015 8:52 am

An active and fanatical libcultist throwing yet another piece of half-baked pseudo-scientific spaghetti against the wall to see if it will – FINALLY! – Stick.
I suggest you don’t hold your breath, Naomi, waiting for any more of you and your fellow libcultists imaginative musings to have any effect on the little peeps. They are much quicker to see through the various libcult scams than you would ever want to believe.

D.I.
August 18, 2015 9:01 am

This is what happens in Russia when they catch ‘charlatans’.
http://tass.ru/en/russia/815065

Curious George
Reply to  D.I.
August 18, 2015 9:29 am

Russians use the acronym TASS – Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union. They are looking both backward and forward.

Reply to  Curious George
August 18, 2015 10:32 am

USSR = CIS — ( Commie-wealth of Independent Soviets). V. Putin is their Premier.

Leon Brozyna
August 18, 2015 9:05 am

Sounds like a frustrated authoritarian, and we’ve seen plenty of examples of the fruits of authoritarianism during the twentieth century.

Curious George
August 18, 2015 9:10 am

There is a nice German proverb “Maul halten und weiter dienen” – shut up and keep marching. It is not customary in Germany, or Russia, or China, or Japan, to challenge authorities – including IPCC. Ms Klein would never dream of challenging National Socialism.

RockyRoad
August 18, 2015 9:24 am

Individual freedom vs the collective. Sad that the collective is so easily swayed. Ms. Klein should know better.

August 18, 2015 9:30 am

Talking about the origins of denialism is one of hundreds of ways the believers employ to avoid talking about the fact that they cannot explain why they believe what they believe.

Resourceguy
August 18, 2015 9:34 am

I would suggest further research in non-English speaking locales, like maybe Damascus, Calcutta, Lahore, Dhaka, Quetta, Mecca, and Tripoli. Let us know what you find.

alacran
August 18, 2015 9:36 am

Maybe sceptics are just more able to calculate the human impact on climate change? Given a 3% increase per year and 5% of anthropogenic influence on the global CO2 concentration of 0.04%, a total CO2 emission stop of Germany’s ~3%, for example, would have an impact of just 0.000018%!
That’s why “Warmists” are always fiddling with “Gigatons”, – sounds much bigger than one hundred thousandth of a percentage!
Please correct me,if I’m wrong!

GPHanner
August 18, 2015 9:39 am

People. Sheeple. Take your pick. The wolves dine on Sheeple.

Science or Fiction
August 18, 2015 9:39 am

Personally I don’t think my “colonial settler mentality” is the reason why I distrust the works by IPCC. The reason why I do not trust IPCC is that IPPC operates totally in breach with the modern scientific method; Popper´s empirical method,
Here is the method put simply:
1 A hypothesis is proposed. This is not justified and is tentative.
2 Testable predictions are deduced from the hypothesis and previously accepted statements.
3 We observe whether the predictions are true.
4 If the predictions are false, we conclude the theory is false.
5 If the predictions are true, that doesn’t show the theory is true, or even probably true. All we can say is that the theory has so far passed the tests of it.
Personally, I find the following quotes from “The logic of scientific discovery» by the master mind Karl Popper particularly essential:

“A scientist, whether theorist or experimenter, puts forward statements, or systems of statements, and tests them step by step. In the field of the empirical sciences, more particularly, he constructs hypotheses, or systems of theories, and tests them against experience by observation and experiment.”
“The .. empirical method .. stands directly opposed to all attempts to operate with the ideas of inductive logic. It might be described as the theory of the deductive method of testing, or as the view that a hypothesis can only be empirically tested.”
“I shall certainly admit a system as empirical or scientific only if it is capable of being tested by experience. These considerations suggest that not the verifiability but the falsifiability of a system is to be taken as a criterion of demarcation. In other words: …. it must be possible for an empirical scientific system to be refuted by experience.”
“it is still impossible, for various reasons, that any theoretical system should ever be conclusively falsified. For it is always possible to find some way of evading falsification, for example by introducing ad hoc an auxiliary hypothesis, or by changing ad hoc a definition. It is even possible without logical inconsistency to adopt the position of simply refusing to acknowledge any falsifying experience whatsoever. Admittedly, scientists do not usually proceed in this way, but logically such procedure is possible”
“the empirical method shall be characterized as a method that excludes precisely those ways of evading falsification which … are logically possible. According to my proposal, what characterizes the empirical method is its manner of exposing to falsification, in every conceivable way, the system to be tested. Its aim is not to save the lives of untenable systems but … exposing them all to the fiercest struggle for survival.”
“All this glaringly contradicts the program of expressing, in terms of a ‘probability of hypotheses’, the degree of reliability which we have to ascribe to a hypothesis in view of supporting or undermining evidence.”

Expressing, in terms of a ‘probability of hypotheses’, the degree of reliability to a hypothesis in view of supporting or undermining evidence is exactly what IPCC largely does in their work. They even invented qualitative terms to express level of confidence and degree of agreement. (ref. Guidance Note for Lead Authors of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report on Consistent Treatment of Uncertainties).
“The degree of certainty in key findings in this assessment is based on the author teams’ evaluations of underlying scientific understanding and is expressed as a qualitative level of confidence (from very low to very high) and, when possible, probabilistically with a quantified likelihood (from exceptionally unlikely to virtually certain). Confidence in the validity of a finding is based on the type, amount, quality, and consistency of evidence (e.g., data, mechanistic understanding, theory, models, expert judgment) and the degree of agreement» (Contribution from working group I to the fifth assessment report from IPCC.
And they failed to notice the only significant international guideline on quantitative expression of uncertainty. (Guide to the expression of uncertainty in measurement)
An most important , I see very few sign of deduction and exposure to falsification – in every conceivable way the system to be tested.
“The Logic of Scientific Discovery” It is well worth a read. The first part of the book is easy reading and enlightening on Popper´s empirical method. I think that scientific minds will find it soothing.
( http://strangebeautiful.com/other-texts/popper-logic-scientific-discovery.pdf )

I wonder which consequences Naomi Klein has deducted from her hypotheses, and how she has tested them. Naomi Klein demonstrates that she is not endorsing the modern scientific method. I also think Naomi Klein has demonstrated that: inductive reasoning is no more scientific than making a baby, it can be more or less sophisticated – but it isn´t science.

Peyelut
August 18, 2015 9:45 am

Unfortunately, for Warren, the “conclusions of Science” are subject to “change”. Too damn funny, it’s (the change) almost certain.
Sail on, Captain Obvious.

601nan
August 18, 2015 9:46 am

Since about 1990 I would hazard the UK to be a principle center for Climate Alarmism.
However, ‘Frontier’ is a term used in this ‘paper’ as a pejorative. If we consider the the Roman Optimum times, then certainly UK (and all mentioned, even most of Europe, are ‘Frontier’). If we consider Ethiopia at about 2.4 million years ago, then all of Eurasia, the Americas and Polynesia are ‘Frontier’.
So the point of the ‘paper’ is to ‘put-down’ non-Europeans, making Europeans the preferred racial distinction of high value.
Welcome to the 21st Century Race War.
Ha ha

Charlie
Reply to  601nan
August 18, 2015 10:15 am

Well yes Europeans aren’t immune to nationality or race baiting. The European media and the left American media has been telling Europeans they are enlightened compared to Americans for a while now. You will notice that this will be added with Americans are stupid or our politics are outdated. This is the same as the bait minority races inside the US itself. it has worked for the most part to promote socialism.. that is why they continue it. it has very little basis in reality.

Eyes Wide Open
August 18, 2015 9:57 am

When the hell did the UK become ‘frontier’?

GPHanner
Reply to  Eyes Wide Open
August 18, 2015 10:15 am

Back when the Celts inhabited Great Britain?

Harry Passfield
Reply to  Eyes Wide Open
August 18, 2015 12:55 pm

When did the UK become ‘frontier’? During the Roman warm period, I guess – about the time Hadrian’s Wall was built. If NK lived then, she would no doubt be telling the Emperor to curb the emissions from burning out the locals. But then, the Roman warming didn’t last ‘coz climate change intervened….

Joe
August 18, 2015 10:02 am

“The rest of Europe has a keener sense of boundaries – they’ve lived against the limits of nature for longer.”
Maybe the rest of Europe can come up with a Schlieffen Plan or Maginot Line to defend themselves against Climate Change AKA AGW?

Peyelut
August 18, 2015 10:08 am

And I was always lead to believe that “Ideation” was beyond the capabilities of the average over-edjumacated Bimbo.

gonewiththewind
August 18, 2015 10:10 am

No! That’s not the reason. The reason is that those of us in the Western world are expected to pay for this scam. If you want to see us 1st worlders get on board make the 3rd world pay us to “fix” the climate.

Peyelut
August 18, 2015 10:15 am

Are the Inuit, and various south American and other sundry recluse (vis a vis Modern Humans) aboriginal peoples “Deniers”, or do they lack the “Frontier Mentality”?
Fascinating. I can’t wait for the Pretzel.

Resourceguy
August 18, 2015 10:50 am

I hear the beaches are lovely this time of year in Yemen and Somalia. Go for it.

Dawtgtomis
August 18, 2015 11:04 am

Have you ever noticed that folks who have others all figured out usually don’t seem to have themselves figured out?

Dawtgtomis
August 18, 2015 11:08 am

Let’s just say that the “frontier mentality” is what keeps folks from driving the wagons over a cliff…

JON R SALMI
August 18, 2015 11:12 am

Unlike alarmists we are not a flock of sheep.

Berényi Péter
August 18, 2015 11:20 am

Naomi Klein is not fond of Israel either. Too much frontier mentality perhaps?

August 18, 2015 11:36 am

Apparently, people in a lot of European countries are even more sceptical that us pioneer (hill billies). Holland which is below sea level and Danmark, which generates a lot of wind power are just not buying into the hype either.

Berényi Péter
Reply to  Cameron Melin
August 18, 2015 12:49 pm

Right.
Proportion responding in 2008-09 that global warming was a serious personal threat.comment image

Phillip Bratby
August 18, 2015 11:45 am

What a weird woman.

Richard T
August 18, 2015 12:05 pm

Europeans have a keener sense of boundaries? Gosh let me think about that. USSR = Russia + 14 others; unified Germany; Czech + Slovakia; Yugoslavia = Serbia + Slovenia + Croatia + Bosnia + whatever; Ukraine = a work in progress. Now that is what – 25+ years. Well defined indeed?

Denis Ables
August 18, 2015 12:19 pm

These warministas have no clue about the actual science so invariably busy themselves analyzing their opponents experience, education, brain, etc.

KO
August 18, 2015 12:20 pm

Sheeple vs people?
Of course, she’s bonkers anyway – a quick look at the genetic map of England will reveal that it is one of the most settled and ancient societies in the world. The genetic mix is largely the same today as it was in the 9th Century, outside of the great cities where immigration throws up anomalies.
Utter bilge from Klein – again.

Brad Rich
August 18, 2015 12:24 pm

Her logic is doubtless based in some sort of survey or scientific account. No? Well then my opinion is as good as hers. This is a good thing, being a pioneer! Artificial boundaries are for the sheep, though often led to slaughter.

AndyG55
August 18, 2015 12:52 pm

Naomi dear.. Canadian, aren’t you..
Well, if you are really worried about a it of warming.. then move north .
The North West Territories beckon you.
I bet you actually live within 100km of the US border, probably on that little spike of Ontario that brings you even further south
And where do you holiday in winter?

Charles Davis
August 18, 2015 1:12 pm

Again, a valiant attempt to explain the mental defects of us skeptics. First we were conspiracy theorists, and now pioneers.
I think our true common defect is that we are applying the Scientific Method in a post-reality society. We really should know better. We tell people this sort of thing:
Hypothesis: CO2 will cause runaway warming.
Experiment: Let the CO2 continue to increase 20 years.
Result: No warming.
Conclusion: The hypothesis is incorrect.
There was this golden age where this reasoning worked. No more. We’ll probably have to wait for an ice age to convince these people.

August 18, 2015 1:21 pm

BFL said:
“August 18, 2015 at 10:07 am
This title might explain the problem and also what I’ve got against cats:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cat-parasite-toxoplasma-gondii-linked-to-mental-illness-schizophrenia/
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/toxoplasmosis/basics/causes/con-20025859
http://www.health24.com/Medical/Diseases/Diseases-from-cats-Client-20120721
Of course if you need a good barn mouser then they might be more fun than rat traps.”
I say don’t take everything you read at face value! My reply isn’t really off-topic, since we are speaking of alarmist hype in service to a political agenda, BFL.
In this case, there is most definitely a concerted bias against free ranging and/or feral domestic cats, from orgs like the Audubon Society, and “environmental” advocacy groups who make sensational claims with little to no actual evidence (sound familiar?).
I became interested in this specific topic when California Sea otters were found to be dying from Toxoplasmosis infections, and the hype was that it was caused by runoff into the sea from people emptying cat litter boxes on land (hype from biased “researchers” at UC Davis). Coincidentally, I was already interested in Dr. Torrey’s research on TG since I work with folks experiencing severe mental illness. Ultimately, it was proven through DNA analysis that the Sea Otters were infected with strains of TG that were unique.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15003489
But you can bet that some environmental group, or cat-hating group will still try to hype the cat connection.
Although E.Fuller Torrey was a pioneer in exploring the possibility of a link between toxoplasmosis and severe mental illness, he would be among the first to say that he did not find any “proof” of a connection, only that there was some correlation that does not necessarily mean “causation”.
The facts are that
1) all felines of every species are the “definitive hosts” of *sexual* reproduction of the toxoplasma organism. However, this crafty microbe also reproduces asexually in virtually every warm-blooded species (including birds and sea mammals), and even in some cold-blooded ones (sea mussels) on the planet by cloning itself.
Humans are by far the most infested animals.Worldwide it is second only to malaria as far as infections go. It is even found in the foxes on Svalbard island, a place where no felines have ever lived.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18096319 (among others)
2) In the USA, the leading cause of Toxoplasma infection is meat-eating, and it is a leading food-borne illness, according to the CDC : http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/toxoplasmosis/ (among other articles) .Approximately 22% of the US human population carries Toxoplasma at any given time. In other places around the world, approximately 95% of the population carries it.
Clearly, Toxoplasma Gondii infection (Toxoplasmosis) ain’t all about “cats”.
And with even less bonafide evidence, “climate change” ain’t all about human CO2 emissions, no matter how far afield someone like NK wants to stretch her imagination in order to make the case for it. .

August 18, 2015 1:30 pm

One thing about a “frontier mentality” she didn’t consider, a love of independence, in thought and action.
I’m not from Missouri but it used to frontier county in the US. It’s called “The Show Me State”.
The alarmist with their models have failed to show anything that matches reality.

August 18, 2015 2:17 pm

Maybe she should consider another reason; Many of the top (actural) climate scientists are from these countries and speak in English, e.g. Richard Lindzen, Roy Spencer, John Christy, etc.

GuarionexSandoval
August 18, 2015 2:21 pm

Notice, Naomi, that it has been the most insular, whether politically or racially or religiously, who ended up during the 20th century running over everyone’s borders and requiring the hard work of the frontier-mentality nations to put them back. The idea that we should give in to despot mentality, whether of another nation or ideology or ideology masquerading as science, is ludicrous.
But, then, Naomi, you are showing the classic liberal mentality: the belief that the world and all there is in it exist in a one-to-one correspondence with your idea of it.
Sorry, babe, you’re dead wrong, and we’re not going along with your death wish.

August 18, 2015 2:35 pm

Smitten! Can’t recall seeing a better looking alarmist grace these pages? (I bet you a fiver I can convert her to our Team.) This will be my first line….
“Hey Nay! Since China produces more CO2 than all of us colonizing frontiersmen put together, can you name the great Chinese explorers that colonized the world with their brazen frontier attitude? No, how’s about din din the, I here the crow is great up Nort’ in Canadia…”

H.R.
August 18, 2015 2:47 pm

Ms. Klein is talking pure mush; pure propaganda pushing. There is no truth whatsoever in her words.
Fer cryin’ out loud, who in the heck “denies climate”!?!?? Who in their right mind denies the climate changes?!?? I made it through grade school and learned about Tropical Earth, Snowball Earth, the past glaciation that covered my neighborhood, and I could look out the window and see that the glaciers were gone. Grade school! And, by gosh and by golly, it seems we have warmed up since the Little Ice Age. Imagine that!
‘Climate Change’ has become code for ‘Global Warming,’ which was shorthand for the original ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming,’ which was code for ‘CO2-based Anthropogenic Global Warming,’ which was being sold as ‘Runaway Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming due to Fossil Fuel use’… which isn’t happening and which isn’t ever going to happen if it didn’t happen when atmospheric CO2 was 3,000-4,000 or more ppm. “We’re all gonna die and we’re all gonna fry” above 350ppm my sweet Aunt Fanny!!!
*pause for a breath*… *and another*
Naomi Klein is talking pure Social Science poop and I recommend that she consult with Stephan Lewandowsky to learn how to do it properly. The critters and the cause of their behavior she is talking about do not exist except in her bit of Marxist heaven (where they are kept in cages, and fed tree bark when not being cattle-prodded, as a warning to right-thinking people). Skeptics are not one thing; one monolithic lump of wrong-thinking humanity. The whole premise of a “frontier mentality” is made up of whole cloth just to denigrate those who might stand in the way of her dreams of a Marxist utopia. That’s the warp and the woof of it.
Her declaration, that those with a “frontier mentality” have no brake on their propensity to use up all available resources, is patently false and is an insult to all good stewards of the Earth who happen to be skeptical of the idea that there is some sort of climate-related emergency or imminent doom to befall all of mankind, and that it is all due to fossil fuel use.
I would prefer that she just throw herself on the ground, kicking and screaming in the finest tradition of the tantrums of a 3-year old, and explain that her animus towards a skeptical viewpoint is because, “You skeptics just won’t do what I want you to do! Waaahhhh!!!” That would be honest, and I could accept that viewpoint.
Now, will ya’ll excuse me while I take a break and dab the flecks of spittle from the corners of my mouth?
/end irritated response, liberally spiked with incredulity, to Naomi Klein’s nonsense

pat
August 18, 2015 3:08 pm

memo to Naomi –
surely it was the pioneers with frontier mentality who created CAGW.

August 18, 2015 3:15 pm

How would she know how prevalent AGW skepticism is anywhere else?
It appears most of the citizens of China aren’t buying into the AGW nonsense either. In fairness, though , I think Genghis Khan (or whatever the current PC spelling of his name is is) could be classified as a “frontier-buster” and independent thinker. Show me your (unmanipulated) data,Naomi !

Zeke
August 18, 2015 3:45 pm

“The rest of Europe has a keener sense of boundaries – they’ve lived against the limits of nature for longer.”
The truth is that what has happened in the English-speaking countries does not support this historic paradigm at all.
The combination of hard work, equality before the law, private property, and literacy have resulted in a grand experiment. The story is not one of “used up resources,” but of increasing the uses and productivity with what we already have.
To illustrate:
1. Cattle are fed now with the remainder of the corn stalk. The stalks and leaves are ground up and stored in cement bins. The aged silage feeds cattle during the winter months when pasture is limited or lost under the snow. (Not to mention that cattle also eat unsalable apples, potatoes, etc.. turning them into superior proteins, medication, leather, and fertilizers.)
2. The cotton plant through most of history was difficult to use because of the seeds. Once the seeds were easily mechanically removed, cotton became more plentiful. But yields increased enormously with chemical inputs and the use of tractors. Not only that, innovative entrepreneurs in the US found a use for the tiny cotton seed, and now cottonseed oil is another product created from the same cotton plant.
3. The excess water flow in cities is now used to also flush away sewer and waste through the simple use of gravity and careful drainage engineering.
Without the millions of tiny innovative steps – which were mainly developed in free, open, Protestant countries by men and women whose names have practically been forgotten – almost everything would be a luxury item. This lady is speaking in English, but she is attempting to frame history to suit her belief in a superior caste that must direct culture, education, and production. It’s a really really bad paradigm. No one should listen to that. Americans and Brits should know John Smeaton, Bazalgette, Goodyear, and Wright Brothers (and hundreds more like them) as geniuses, rather than Darwin and Einstein.

August 18, 2015 3:51 pm

I think Naomi Klein suffers from cultural isolation. She is English speaking and hangs around with rich folk and religious extremists like Pope Francisco. I read and watch other media, and I noticed they focus mostly on government corruption, football, illegal immigrants, football, unemployment, and football.

August 18, 2015 4:07 pm

Countries which were founded on a frontier experience have developed a very strong ability to smell bullshit. They have experienced it daily and can detect it immediately. This is why they know that ‘Global Warming/CAGW/Climate change is not threatening them.

Reply to  ntesdorf
August 18, 2015 7:07 pm

tesdorf: I can’t help myself after your comment –
“What’s the difference between a cowboy and a CAGW alarmist?”
“A cowboy has the BS on the outside of his boots. “

John Whitman
August 18, 2015 5:20 pm

Naomi Klein is sooooo late 19th century and early 20th century socialist leftovers.
Capitalism vs. Collectivism in history has been written.
Capitalism ignored collectivism which caused collectivism to go bankrupt economically, morally and intellectually. Socialism is based on collectivism.
John

August 18, 2015 5:21 pm

“Klein said the denial of climate science was prevalent in English-speaking countries such as Australia, Canada, the US and the UK because of a “colonial settler mentality.”
One might also add that climate alarmism is prevalent among urban postmodern politically correct educated populations who subscribe to a romanticized notion of the natural world as existing in a benign state of “delicate” “fragile” “balance” with any evidence of detriment or unusual change as prima facie evidence of human “impact”. While they profess a love of nature their own chosen environment is the tiny fraction of the world where nature has been virtually annihilated. Although they express deep concern about “threats” to nature they have no hopeful interest in any evidence that a threat might not be as bad as they claim to fear. Rather, they angrily reject it. It is apparent their real emotional commitment is more to the threats than to nature.
They produce nothing useful but condemn those whose production supports them. Their horizon is limited to the narrow zone between the shop and the rubbish bin with little awareness of what comes before or after. If they achieve what they wish to impose on the productive sector their own most valuable contribution to nature may well be as compost.

Scott
August 18, 2015 5:53 pm

This woman is deranged!….

cgh
Reply to  Scott
August 19, 2015 5:41 pm

Worse, she’s a Cadillac communist. Global warming is just a fringe concern for her. She’s a far-left socialist who has repeatedly expressed her admiration and support for Hugo Chavez over the years. She’s married to Avi Lewis. Lewis used to be a mouthpiece for the CBC (that’s the state media Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for you foreigners).
Lewis was sacked from the CBC after a particularly egregious interview he conducted with Ayaan Ali Hirsi in which among other things he accused Hirsi of exaggerating what she had been subjected to in her native Somalia. Lewis promptly fled to Al-Jazeera, where he was shortly after joined by former CBC News head Tony Burman.
So, both Klein and her spouse Lewis are cardinal examples of a particularly self-righteous Canadian left.

August 18, 2015 5:54 pm

A friend on Facebook posted this article yesterday (I had never heard of Naomi Klein, so I did some searching) this one on Youtube was interesting:

August 18, 2015 6:11 pm

Here is a reflection: We got out of the country after the Vietnamese invasion with the photographs of what Pol Pot had done. The UN decided to let Pol Pot to be an “observer” and China took him in as a kindred spirit. No US publications would print the photos which are now “noble prize winning” art of the most radical genocide in modern times. It is disgraceful!

Phlogiston
Reply to  fossilsage
August 18, 2015 6:29 pm

Makes perfect sense. The Khmer Vert (modern AGW-environmentalist movement) is the direct descendant of the Khmer Rouge.
Khmer Pasteque anyone?

Phlogiston
August 18, 2015 6:22 pm

Klein is right – sadly it is true that the imbecilic denial of continual natural climate change lies at the heart of the AGW movement and its Mann-made narrative that climate never changed until humans came onto the scene and carbon-sinned. And the English speaking countries have played a leading role in this AGW scam/power grab.
Dissipative nonlinear-fractal oscillation is the most fundamental physical characteristic of the ocean-atmosphere climate system. While it exists it will continuously exhibit “climate change” over a fractal range of amplitudes and timescales. Understanding of this fact undermines climate alarmism. Klein is herself on the side of the true deniers of climate change.

August 18, 2015 6:33 pm

I see that we here at the bottom of the world, the edge of the Empire and the dawn of each day have been mentioned in three comments, but would still like to record that I was deeply offended by Naomi’s failure to include New Zealanders on her list. – Russell McMahon.

g3ellis
August 18, 2015 7:47 pm

Hey Naomi,
I have a better idea for you. Maybe critical thinking is a survival skill that lets frontier types survive as frontier types. You don’t need it living in your urban metropolis. You don’t need to plan for 6 months of winter with no food except what you stored the previous seasons. So maybe the grasshopper should quit telling the ant that the weather will be warmer, so quit storing food for the winter.

Graphite
August 18, 2015 10:08 pm

If the photo is a true representation of Ms Klein, then she definitely has to work on the concerned-feminist-liberal-greenie head-tilt. The shoulders need to be kept straight with just the noggin tilted. And there’s something amiss with the eyes, too.

Non Nomen
Reply to  Graphite
August 19, 2015 12:18 am

You mean Sam Eagle’s eyebrows?

John F. Hultquist
August 18, 2015 10:23 pm

Background reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_Thesis#Closed_frontier
Arguments advanced by historian Frederick Jackson Turner regarding
that American democracy was formed by the American frontier (paper in 1893)

August 18, 2015 10:37 pm

“Climate change is threatening to that because there are limits and you have to respect those limits”
Actually, the climate change agenda is not the Club of Rome agenda. It has to do only with a need to reduce CO2 emissions although it has to be said that there is no real evidence that reduction in human emissions would have any impact on changes in atmospheric CO2. Pls see: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2642639

Non Nomen
August 19, 2015 12:00 am

Nice attempt by N. Klein to ostracise “dissenters”.
But this attempt is going to fail, because it’s the “dissenters” who are right.

Resourceguy
Reply to  Non Nomen
August 19, 2015 1:35 pm

And attacking fact checkers only works in a short-term hit and run “frontier tactic” of ambush warfare.

August 19, 2015 12:19 am

Yes, there’s nothing like millennia of theocratic rule and constant religious and territorial wars to give one a sense of acceptance.

John
August 19, 2015 1:48 am

People who unquestioningly believe government propaganda and slavishly follow orders are less likely to be climate deniers.

August 19, 2015 7:24 am

It is sometimes called Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming. It was previously believed that a smog-induced Ice Age would result from human activity. Now, it’s more fashionably referred to as Climate Change, so no matter which way the thermometer goes, it can be blamed upon mankind. It is the Earth Goddess Gaia’s Divine Retribution for the evils of capitalism and the Original Sin of private property. [Any pollution caused by government or naturally occurring factors are exempt from concern, which is why the Greens don’t mention it.]
The proof that it is akin to religion is exemplified by the reaction to any evidence to the contrary, no matter how dispassionately it is presented and no matter how exhaustive and objective the research. Such heresy is typically greeted by foaming-at-the-mouth hysteria, just as is the case with any religious zealot. Doubters are regarded and treated like the Infidel. Scientists who question the the data or reasoning behind Anthropogenic Climate Change are persecuted.
What is their end game?
The concern over Climate Change will end when government owns or at least controls everything. Pollution likely will increase under that paradigm, because an all-controlling government is less accountable. But the sin of private property will be removed, so Gaia will be propitiated. Further, the economy will inevitably decline under such medievalism, so fewer people will own things like cars and furnaces or be able to afford electricity. It is no coincidence that Climate Change activists are also advocates of One World Government. They want people to have no escape from their policies.
Technology will deteriorate, so the number of people who can survive under such conditions will be reduced dramatically. If we reverted to a pre-Industrial lifestyle, the world would only be able to support a single-digit percentage of the present human population. That is a good thing to those who consider homo sapiens to fundamentally be a vermin on this Earth.
Such is the Utopia that gladdens the hearts of the Greens as they look forward — by working to bring mankind backward and downward.

Philip Arlington
Reply to  Wal Ford
August 19, 2015 8:23 pm

It will die down with a whimper, as it simply becomes irrelevant what gullt-ridden white Westerners think, in an Asian-dominated world.

David Cage
August 19, 2015 8:07 am

…..Well it is probably true, that it is the peoples of Africa, the second largest real continent, who best live in harmony with nature; …..
No it is very much not true. The intensive burning of wood has resulted in terrific erosion and desert creep.
They have no idea of how to maintain land without fertilisers using organic means but fail to use non organic ones for lack of money. They habitually over graze land to make the problems they have even worse. All in all they are an ecological disaster.

Michael Harris
August 19, 2015 11:28 am

Her front tier is missing making her mentality?

u.k.(us)
August 19, 2015 2:19 pm

“Where that frontier narrative is strongest is where denialism is strongest.”
“The rest of Europe has a keener sense of boundaries – they’ve lived against the limits of nature for longer.”
====
Two “world” wars were fought during the last century, they weren’t fought so nature could linger longer.
Wake up.

Langenbahn
August 19, 2015 7:03 pm

Yes, Naomi, nothing so becomes the English Speaking world as its contempt for intellectuals.

Philip Arlington
August 19, 2015 8:20 pm

I’m a climate realist and I find the rough and ready, gun-loving culture of the frontier repulsive.
The thing that climate realists have in common is that we have looked at the facts and thought about them for ourselves. Most of us used to take it for granted that the so-called consensus wasn’t a great big lie, but the reality is that it is.

Steve
August 20, 2015 10:25 am

I have never heard anyone who denies man made global warming or global warming in general say anything that remotely implies “nature than can be endlessly extracted”. All denials or skepticism I have heard is based on the fact that measurements and what they have experienced do not match what the “climate science” says is happening.
She is implying that a denialist thinks “We can put all the crap we want into the air and nothing will ever happen, there is just too much air!” That is an argument I have NEVER heard. Until now.

rah
August 20, 2015 1:24 pm

What I can’t figure out is why anyone would give a rats ass about what Naomi Klein “thinks” or writes. And yet this comment is number 323 on the subject.

JR
August 20, 2015 4:37 pm

Here is a reasonable view from another Canadian, Lawrence Solomon, in his recent column “Anglosphere leads on global warming”. It begins:
“The greatest constellation that the world has ever created of free markets, property rights, the rule of law and economic liberty — the Anglosphere of Britain and the former colonies that broadly adopted its ever-adaptable culture and resilient political structure — has been dominant now for centuries, first through the British Empire, then through America’s supremacy. The same virtues that allowed Anglo-exceptionalism to flourish is leading the way again in the greatest environmental controversy of our age, as evidenced by the Anglosphere’s flirtation with, then rejection of, the global warming orthodoxy….”
… and closes:
“… The Anglosphere is special, driven by inquiring minds that ever-question received wisdom. That spirit, supreme in the world for centuries, has repeatedly delivered us from harms and guided us to better places. The global warming orthodoxy is but one example of the Anglosphere’s ability to peer through the murk, recognize reality, and lead the world.”
Read it all at:
http://business.financialpost.com/fp-comment/lawrence-solomon-anglosphere-leads-on-global-warming

Mervyn
August 21, 2015 7:09 am

Why does anyone pay attention to this silly woman? She is not a scientist. She’s a propagandist.

Call A Spade
August 26, 2015 4:53 am

Don’t have a clue who she is but she is hot, deluded but hot, an aussie that thinks for himself and for that sake left wing does not mean fascism. You need to learn your politics google political compass sometime and stop believing mainstream tv news.