Quote of the week: climate awareness one of the 'greatest human achievements'

Argh. You often wonder how weapons grade hubris can be come to be. For example, we shake our head at the hubris of people like Michael Mann and James Hansen, whom I’m convinced are simply victims of noble cause corruption in their quest to “save the planet”. Well it seems NPR reporter Adam Frank has topped everyone when it comes to talking about climate science and its importance in the scheme of things.

greatest-acheivements

From the NPR story: The Climate Story Nobody Talks About (h/t to Marc Morano)

In service of answering this question and looking for perspectives on climate change beyond the usual focus on controversy, let’s begin by acknowledging a single fact that’s rarely discussed in the media: Climate science is a triumph of human civilization.

Landing on the moon. The development of relativity theory. The discovery of DNA. We rightfully hail these accomplishments as testaments to the creative power of the human imagination. We point to them as the highest achievements of our species, calling them milestones in our collective evolution.

But climate science is no different. It, too, belongs in that short list of epoch making human efforts.

Bold mine.

In short, climate science is supposedly one of the greatest achievements of mankind, after all, the IPCC awarded the Nobel Prize in 2007 to a couple of guys named Al Gore and Rajenda K. Pachauri, both of which have had sex scandals, and Pachauri had to step down as head of the IPCC. Gore seems to be politically self-neutered and few people except bots seem to care anymore about what he has to say.

In fact, the U.N. poll of over 7 million people says climate change is dead last in concern.

UN-poll-AGW-dead-last

I found this but of chutzpah in the article quite amazing:

Just two centuries ago, humanity barely understood that a planet’s climate could change at all.

Tell it to the Vikings in Greenland, the people that went through the cold and crop failures of the dark ages period with black plague, and the people that lived through the Little Ice Age, and the Peruvians.

No, nobody ever figured out the climate could change before our current crop of saviors of humanity came along. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Maybe nobody ever talks about The Climate Story Nobody Talks About simply because it’s ridiculous to claim it is of “humanity’s greatest achievements”, particularly since doomsayers like the disgraced identity thief and faked up documents purveyor Dr. Peter Gleick was telling us in 2010 that we are past the point of no return anyway? Oh wait, that was the last chance climate conference in 2009. Adam Frank is talking about the next last chance conference coming in Paris this fall.

Some achievement, King Canute would be proud.

Note: this story was updated shortly after publication to fix an error in the title and give a hat tip to the source for the NPR story

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Djozar
September 10, 2015 11:29 am

Hmmm…Tacitus wrote about how the Germans related that in former times the Rhine would completely freeze over. Is that modern, 56-117 CE?

george e. smith
Reply to  Djozar
September 10, 2015 6:39 pm

Speaking of the Rhine, and the greatest human achievements; Climate awareness doesn’t even come close to Richard Wagner’s ” Der Ring des Nibelungen ”
And that was all done by just one man.
Well we do also owe something to Cosima, for preserving it for us.
G

John Robertson
September 10, 2015 11:36 am

Two days ago I was at the Royal Terrel Museum in Drumheller Alberta.
great place to apreciate how small man really is.
Climate changes ? Who knew?
When you are face to face with the bones of creatures that could not live today, due to a lack of biomass to feed on, it is somewhat hard to take the hysteria of CAGW as anything but a puton.

urederra
Reply to  John Robertson
September 10, 2015 12:48 pm

And there is not enough biomass nowadays because there is not enough CO2 in the atmosphere.

Peter Sable
September 10, 2015 11:38 am

Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of climate alarmism will be to forever banish alarmism as a source of control over societies and liberties.
Well, one can hope, right?
Peter

Auto
Reply to  Peter Sable
September 10, 2015 1:53 pm

Peter
We certainly can hope.
You and I will do what we can to persuade.
But – Forever – our nemesises have all of time itself before them.
Constant alertness, please.
Auto

Reply to  Peter Sable
September 10, 2015 3:01 pm

Memory has a life span of 1 generation,

asybot
Reply to  pmhinsc
September 10, 2015 9:32 pm

History repeats itself.

Lady Gaiagaia
Reply to  pmhinsc
September 10, 2015 9:34 pm

Which is why, sadly, each new generation needs to be inoculated against the virus of socialism.

Ralph Kramden
September 10, 2015 11:40 am

Climate science is a triumph of human civilization
I think this statement pushes the limits of stupidity to heights never before achieved in human civilization.

Bryan A
Reply to  Ralph Kramden
September 10, 2015 12:21 pm

Raises High on the rim, Like a Crown and low in the middle like a valley. So Climate Science is the Crowning achievement in the valley of stupidity

Dahlquist
Reply to  Ralph Kramden
September 11, 2015 1:19 am

Ralph,
“We rightfully hail these accomplishments as testaments to the creative power of the human imagination.”
The alarmists and their news and “science studies” crews sure do have good imaginations with the crapola they come up with. It’s disappointing that with the funding they get their imaginations mostly fail them. “Create” imaginary BS and sell it to the zombies is high up there in the scope of human endeavors, I am sure.

Reply to  Ralph Kramden
September 11, 2015 9:55 am

IT’S RECORD BREAKING!!!!

September 10, 2015 11:42 am

Greatest achievement? Truly, our bread is being buttered on both sides now. Climatology should not even be called a science. Where is its predictive power? When alarmist claims rest on a molehill of manipulated data, this is nothing short of laughable.

Bloke down the pub
September 10, 2015 11:43 am

For Great Human Achievement I nominate WUWT. In future it may be shown to have played a part in saving mankind.

Sam The First
Reply to  Bloke down the pub
September 10, 2015 12:48 pm

Seconded. Sane people everywhere owe Anthony (and the scientists who support his page with their informed comment) a huge debt of gratitude

Auto
Reply to  Sam The First
September 10, 2015 2:01 pm

++++
Auto
Us commoners may add a smidgen, but the Heavy Duty Scientists get – rightly – the huge bulk of the gratitude for – Only You Can Save Mankind’.
Auto

george e. smith
Reply to  Sam The First
September 10, 2015 6:43 pm

Sorry Auto; I’m busy.
I’m the only one who can prevent forest fires, and I have my hands full right now !!
g

Don B
September 10, 2015 11:46 am

“Just two centuries ago, humanity barely understood that a planet’s climate could change at all.”
‘It is a historical fact that the glacier in Glacier Bay began its retreat around 1750. By the time Capt. George Vancouver arrived there in 1794 the glacier still filled most of the bay but had already retreated some miles.
‘When John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, visited in 1879, he found that the glacier had retreated more than 30 miles from the mouth of the bay, according to the National Park Service, and by 1900 Glacier Bay was mostly ice-free.’
[All of that climate change was 100% natural.]
http://www.wsj.com/articles/obamas-half-baked-alaska-1441321015

Bryan A
Reply to  Don B
September 10, 2015 12:25 pm

And the simple fact that the Current retreating Ice is still revealing remnants of prior Viking civilizations that have been buried by that same ice. Conditions had to be Ice Free at those locations for the settlements to have been founded in the first place.

Bryan A
Reply to  Don B
September 10, 2015 12:27 pm

Not to mention the simple fact that Retreating Ice is still revealing remnants of prior Viking Civilizations that could not have existed unless prior conditions had also been Ice Free at the time of their founding

Jimbo
Reply to  Don B
September 10, 2015 12:35 pm

“Just two centuries ago, humanity barely understood that a planet’s climate could change at all.”

That’s right! They just did not notice that we had……
Crop failures, hunger, mass migration, epidemics, great storms in the North Atlantic, Europe wide witch hunts, endemic Malaria in England & part of the Arctic Circle, higher wildfire frequency in circumboreal forests, strong droughts in central Africa (1400–1750), social unrest in China, dead Central American coral reef, century-scale droughts in East Africa, large increases in flood magnitude (upper Mississippi tributaries), environmental and economic deterioration in Norway, decline in average height of Northern European men, climate became drier on the Yucatan Peninsula, sudden and catastrophic end of the Norse Western Settlement in Greenland, River Thames freeze-overs, agro-ecological, socioeconomic, and demographic catastrophes, leading to the General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century.
[References for the above]

Jimbo
Reply to  Jimbo
September 10, 2015 12:47 pm

Just two centuries ago….! Can you say human child sacrifice in pre-Columbian cultures? People have been aware of climate change for some time.
Why were witches executed OVER 200 years ago? Part of the answer is of course CLIMATE CHANGE!

Abstract – 1999
Wolfgang Behringer
Climatic Change and Witch-Hunting: The Impact of the Little Ice Age on Mentalities
……During the late 14th and 15th centuries the traditional conception of witchcraft was transformed into the idea of a great conspiracy of witches, to explain “unnatural” climatic phenomena……..The resurgence of the Little Ice Age revealed the susceptibility of society. Scapegoat reactions may be observed by the early 1560s even though climatologists, thus far, have been of the opinion that the cooling period did not begin until 1565. Despite attempts of containment, such as the calvinistic doctrine of predestination, extended witch-hunts took place at the various peaks of the Little Ice Age because a part of society held the witches directly responsibile for the high frequency of climatic anomalies and the impacts thereof. The enormous tensions created in society as a result of the persecution of witches demonstrate how dangerous it is to discuss climatic change under the aspects of morality.
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-015-9259-8_13
doi:10.1007/978-94-015-9259-8_13
===============================
Abstract – 1999
Christian Pfister et. al.
Climatic Variability in Sixteenth-Century Europe and its Social Dimension: A Synthesis
…..Areas discussed include glacier expansion in the Alps, the frequency of natural hazards (floods in central and southern Europe and storms on the Dutch North Sea coast), the impact of climate deterioration on grain prices and wine production, and finally, witch-hunts…..
Peasant communities which were suffering large collective damage from the effects of climatic change pressed authorities for the organization of witch-hunts. Seemingly most witches were burnt as scapegoats of climatic change.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1005585931899
doi:10.1023/A:1005585931899
===============================
Abstract – 2012
Christian Pfister –
Climatic Extremes, Recurrent Crises and Witch Hunts
Strategies of European Societies in Coping with Exogenous Shocks in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries
In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, continental Europe north of the Alps was afflicted by a 13-year cycle of frequent cold and rainy summers which was the result of a series of volcanic explosions in the tropics. The inclement weather led to recurrent subsistence crises and to multiple floods in the Alps following from extensive glacier advances. This article discusses the relationship between ‘climate’ and ‘history’ from the example of this unique period…..
http://mhj.sagepub.com/content/10/1-2/33.short
doi: 10.1177/097194580701000202
===============================
Abstract – 2004
Emily Oster
Witchcraft, Weather and Economic Growth in Renaissance Europe
Abstract:
This paper explores the possibility that the witchcraft trials are a large-scale example of violence and scapegoating prompted by a deterioration in economic conditions. In this case, the downturn was brought on by a decrease in temperature and resulting food shortages. The most active period of the witchcraft trials coincides with a period of lower than average temperature known to climatologists as the “little ice age.” The colder temperatures increased the frequency of crop failure, and colder seas prevented cod and other fish from migrating as far north, eliminating this vital food source for some northern areas of Europe (Fagan, 2000).
===============================
Paper – 2008
Mike Hulme
The conquering of climate: discourses of fear and their dissolution
…..During the centuries leading up to 1800, extremes of weather and climate undoubtedly had the power to induce fear within European populations. The lack of naturalistic explanations for experiences of weather that lay outside normal expectation created a sense of anxiety and foreboding which was diffused, or made sense of, only by interpreting such experiences as expressions of divine or satanic will. These interpretations were usually associated with implied judgements on morally lax behaviour or else on occasions, and in the earlier part of the period, with demonological interventions invoked by the human agency of witches. This dominant world view created powerful and binding narratives about the performance of a wayward climate which contributed to psychological and spiritual survival even as all around might be physically threatened……
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-4959.2008.00266.x/full
DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4959.2008.00266.x

Jimbo
Reply to  Jimbo
September 10, 2015 1:15 pm

It is alleged that humans were not aware of changing climates until 200 years ago. Astonishing!

Abstract
Archaeological and palaeoecological indications of an abrupt climate change in The Netherlands, and evidence for climatological teleconnections around 2650 BP
A sudden and sharp rise in the 14C content of the atmosphere, which occurred between ca. 850 and 760 calendar yr BC (ca. 2750–2450 BP on the radiocarbon time-scale), was contemporaneous with an abrupt climate change. In northwest Europe (as indicated by palaeoecological and geological evidence) climate changed from relatively warm and continental to oceanic. As a consequence, the ground-water table rose considerably in certain low-lying areas in The Netherlands. Archaeological and palaeoecological evidence for the abandonment of such areas in the northern Netherlands is interpreted as the effect of a rise of the water table and the extension of fens and bogs. Contraction of population and finally migration from these low-lying areas, which had become marginal for occupation, and the earliest colonisation by farming communities of the newly emerged salt marshes in the northern Netherlands around 2550 BP, is interpreted as the consequence of loss of cultivated land. Thermic contraction of ocean water and/or decreased velocity and pressure on the coast by the Gulf Stream may have caused a fall in relative sea-level rise and the emergence of these salt marshes. Evidence for a synchronous climatic change elsewhere in Europe and on other continents around 2650 BP is presented. Temporary aridity in tropical regions and a reduced transport of warmth to the temperate climate regions by atmospheric and/or oceanic circulation systems could explain the observed changes. As yet there is no clear explanation for this climate change and the contemporaneous increase of 14C in the atmosphere. The strategy of 14C wiggle-match dating can play an important role in the precise dating of organic deposits, and can be used to establish possible relationships between changing 14C production in the atmosphere, climate change, and the impact of such changes on hydrology, vegetation, and human communities.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/%28SICI%291099-1417%28199611/12%2911:6%3C451::AID-JQS275%3E3.0.CO;2-9/abstract
=============
Abstract
Catastrophic early Holocene sea level rise, human migration and the Neolithic transition in Europe
The collapse of the Laurentide Ice Sheet and release of freshwater 8740–8160 years ago abruptly raised global sea levels by up to 1.4 m. The effect on human populations is largely unknown. Here we constrain the time of the main sea level rise and investigate its effect on the onset of the Neolithic across Europe. An analysis of radiocarbon ages and palaeoshoreline reconstruction supports the hypothesis that flooding of coastal areas led to the sudden loss of land favoured by early farmers and initiated an abrupt expansion of activity across Europe, driven by migrating Neolithic peoples.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2007.07.003
=============
Abstract
Wet phases in the Sahara/Sahel region and human migration patterns in North Africa
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/48/20159.short

Reply to  Jimbo
September 10, 2015 3:03 pm

Jimbo,
Many thanks for your commitment to sourcing contrary studies

Lady Gaiagaia
Reply to  Jimbo
September 10, 2015 6:24 pm

Despite being associated with UEA’s CRU, Kathleen Pribyl has done what looks to me like a good job of reconstructing late Medieval English climate by calibrating with the CET. Would appreciate Tony B’s comments, who works the same fields.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wea.2317/pdf
She finds extreme weather effects from the biggest volcanic eruptions during this period, but they pass quickly. The trend, no surprise, is down from the Medieval Warm Period, not gotten rid of by Mann, et al despite their best anti-statistical efforts., to the LIA. But is wasn’t a steady decline. Thus the people of that time, subject to famine and disease, thus reliant on clement weather for survival, must have noticed climate change within their own lifetimes.
She writes, “The results
reveal a drop in April to July mean temperatures
over the period from 1256 to 1431 from
13°C to 12.4°C (Figure 3). These falling spring
and early summer mean temperatures illustrate
the transition from the Medieval Warm
Period to the Little Ice Age. However, this was
not a smooth transition: decades of colder
and warmer conditions alternated. Higher
April to July mean temperatures prevailed in
the first decade of the fourteenth century,
during the late 1320s and early 1330s, the
1350s and the 1390s. Lower temperatures
marked the mid-1290s, about 1313 to 1323,
the late 1330s and 1340s, the mid-1360s to
the mid-1370s and the 1380s. Additionally
the reconstruction reveals periods of high
and low inter-annual variability in the spring
and early summer temperatures. Between
1315 and 1335 as well as 1360–1375 the
year to year variability was especially high:
jumps in growing season temperatures from
one year to the next were frequently reaching
1.5°C. Phases of medium inter-annual variability
marked 1290–1315, about 1405–1411 and
the early 1420s. Finally, during the second
half of the 1330s and in the 1340s, in the
1350s, around 1380 and in the 1410s spring
and early summer temperatures were comparatively
stable.”

climatereason
Editor
Reply to  Jimbo
September 11, 2015 3:26 am

lady gaiagaia
Hope you see my comment here;
I have written on Pribyl before. Yes it is an interesting reconstruction using manorial crop records for the East Anglian area.
I have the Titow crop records for a wider swathe of southern England and had an additional set translated from the Latin and medieval French. The weather at times seems very disturbed, ranging from warmer than today to colder than today, with many weather extremes thrown in. Volcanic eruptions seem to have a very short term real world effect of a season or two.(which of course could be catastrophic to subsistence farming)
An indication of the changing climate can be seen in the title I have chosen for my next piece of CET reconstruction-approx the 13th and 14th Centuries
‘Tranquility, transition and turbulence’
tonyb

Reply to  Jimbo
September 11, 2015 6:27 am

Welcome back Jimbo! Wonderful to have your seemingly inexhaustible reference library available again.

george e. smith
Reply to  Don B
September 10, 2015 6:45 pm

When did we discover that the earth only has one climate; it’s the same everywhere ??
But it keeps changing everywhere too.
g

September 10, 2015 11:50 am

Double Argh.

Bruce Cobb
September 10, 2015 11:52 am

Totally, barking mad. So-called “climate science”, by which he obviously means the “consensus” is actually the worst, most destructive of both mankind as well as the environment anti-achievement ever produced.

climatereason
Editor
September 10, 2015 11:53 am

Humans have always been aware of changing climate and the need to adapt to it. Many civilisations failed and were overwhelmed as shown in Cambodia, Peru and numerous other places. Al gore wrote a rather good book on th subject, ‘earth in the balance’
I examined many of these changes in climate in various countries in this article carried here a few years ago, including the Romans, Vikings and in Canada and America and the UK
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/01/a-short-anthology-of-changing-climate/
Tonyb

Lady Gaiagaia
Reply to  climatereason
September 10, 2015 12:11 pm

Fat Albert’s books are ghost written by uncredited “collaborators”.
Actually, in 1815 the fact of climate change was recognized and being studied by real scientists, not today’s GIGO computer gamers. In 1801 the great astronomer Sir William Herschel investigated the relationship between sunspots and climate, pointing to the cold conditions of the 17th century during what would come to be called the Maunder Minimum.
By 1830, knowledge of extinct species had grown so much that Henry De la Beche could paint a picture of “A More Ancient Dorset”, relying on fossils found by Mary Anning, starting in 1811. Clearly, Dorset’s climate was balmier during the Jurassic.comment image
Already by 1837, Agassiz proposed the possibility of past ice ages.

Reply to  Lady Gaiagaia
September 10, 2015 12:36 pm

Lady G:
Fat Albert’s books are ghost written by uncredited “collaborators”.
For his sake, I hope his charts were ghost written, too.

Lady Gaiagaia
Reply to  Lady Gaiagaia
September 10, 2015 12:47 pm

He might have made those up himself.

Jimbo
Reply to  Lady Gaiagaia
September 10, 2015 1:32 pm

Lady Gaiagaia,
Here is some more climate change awareness before 1815.

Abstract
Climatic change as a topic in the classical Greek and Roman literature
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00139058
====
Recording Climate Change in the 18th Century
In the 1770s, Samuel Williams, Harvard Class of 1761 and Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, wrote and lectured on the causes of climate change and asserted the probability of climate change in “all cultivated countries and throughout the earth.” Much of this material later appeared in extended form in his book, The Natural and Civil History of Vermont, published in 1794 and 1809.
http://library.harvard.edu/recording-climate-change-18th-century

Lady Gaiagaia
Reply to  Lady Gaiagaia
September 10, 2015 5:34 pm

Jimbo,
Good ones, as usual.
Thanks.
Yup, ancient Greeks understood that different zones of the earth had different climate, which derives from their word “klima” (slope). They also knew that conditions could stay warmer or cooler, wetter or drier, for extended periods. Mycenaean and Minoan civilizations were devastated by the Greek Dark Ages Cold Period.

george e. smith
Reply to  Lady Gaiagaia
September 10, 2015 6:49 pm

Damn busy spot you found their Lady GG. No wonder humans didn’t survive in that era.
g

Lady Gaiagaia
Reply to  climatereason
September 10, 2015 9:54 pm

George,
The fact is that we’ve survived much bigger swings than the mild late Holocene has thrown at us.
The Warmunistas have no knowledge of climate history,

Dahlquist
Reply to  Lady Gaiagaia
September 11, 2015 1:37 am

It seems to be a very narcissistic trait in most of the alarmist population. Self centered and unable to use their great “Imaginations” to understand that the world didn’t just “happen” during their lifetimes. Anything outside of their small, short view of their life experience simply cannot be possible. “the “normal climate” for them is simply what they have experienced since they were old enough to know what seasons are.
A new psychological term needs to be defined for the alarmists… something similar to the definition of someone who attributes human behaviors and characteristics to animals.

kcom1
Reply to  climatereason
September 11, 2015 12:00 am

The difference now, and the real accomplishment, is that we are able to precisely count the number of climate angels who can stand on the head of a climate pin. The people back then couldn’t do that.

Jimbo
Reply to  climatereason
September 11, 2015 2:26 am

Tonyb, thanks for the link full off climate change awareness before 1815. I tried hard to recall a US president’s quotes on his observation of climate change. Your link told me it was Thomas Jefferson.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/01/a-short-anthology-of-changing-climate/

Jimbo
Reply to  Jimbo
September 11, 2015 2:45 am

Here is another. I think we can lay the 200 year claim to rest now.

Von Storch, H. and Stehr, N., 2006
Anthropogenic climate change: a reason for concern since the 18th century and earlier
…1. Religious interpretations of climate anomalies, such as the prolonged wet period in England in the early 14th century, explained the adverse climatic conditions as the divine response to people’s life-style (Stehr and von Storch 1995). In Medieval times, for instance, it was proposed that climatic anomalies, or extreme events, were a punishment for parishes that were too tolerant of witches. Witches were believed to be able to directly cause adverse weather (Behringer 1988). There was a so-phisticated system of rogation in response to droughts in Spain (Barriendos-Vallvé and Martín-Vide 1998).
2. Our oldest case documented by contemporary scientific writing refers to the climate of the North American colonies (Williamson 1771). The physi-cian Williamson analysed the changes of climate, and related them to clearing of the landscape by set-tlers. This is a case in which human action was per-ceived as having a beneficial impact on climate. More cases during Medieval times, related to col-onization by monks, are described by Glacken (1967)…..
http://www.hvonstorch.de/klima/pdf/geografiske-annaler-2006.pdf

Climate change is normal and has always been with us.

BBC – 6 December, 2004
Climate change ‘is the norm’
Viewpoint
By Dr Martin Keeley
Geologist, and a Visiting Professor at University College London
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4066189.stm

Jimbo
Reply to  Jimbo
September 11, 2015 6:59 am

Oh what the heck, here’s a bonus.

David Hume (1711–1776)
Hume believed that the moderation of the climate had been caused by the gradual advance of cultivation in the nations of Europe.

More pre 1815 climate awareness from the book:
Historical Perspectives on Climate Change.
See also
http://www.climate4you.com/ClimateAndHistory.htm
http://www.climate4you.com/ClimateAndHistory%201700-1799.htm

September 10, 2015 12:01 pm

The contraceptive pill, the washing machine and mass transportation networks – these are great achievements.
But they only male things better if you think people should be free to live their lives as they choose.
Scaring people into living their lives as you choose – surely that’s an even greater achievement.
In the short term. They’ll get you in the end.

BillK
Reply to  MCourtney
September 10, 2015 12:19 pm

MCourtney — “The contraceptive pill, the washing machine …” … “they only male things better …”
Heh. As Freud said, “sometimes a cigar is only a cigar”.

Paul
Reply to  BillK
September 10, 2015 1:22 pm

“sometimes a cigar is only a cigar”.”
Freud? Or was that Mr. Clinton?

Reply to  BillK
September 10, 2015 1:57 pm

Good spot.
My typing is so Freudian.
It’s the fingers. I have Carpal Train Tunnel syndrome.

asybot
Reply to  MCourtney
September 10, 2015 9:49 pm

, Might that read Channel Train Tunnel syndrome? That one gets me cramped up as well.

Latitude
September 10, 2015 12:07 pm

“On Nov. 30, world leaders will gather in Paris for a pivotal United Nations conference on climate change.”
Obama Rebuffed As Superpowers Refuse To Sign Arctic Climate Agreement
http://www.thegwpf.com/obama-isolated-as-superpowers-refuse-to-sign-arctic-climate-agreement/

Bryan A
September 10, 2015 12:15 pm

AYUP
Definitely heading for a new Climate Epoch-alypse

September 10, 2015 12:17 pm

It’s really bad thing to have to say and I will admit to a couple of whisky’s, but the best place for the likes of Mann is Syria, preferably in the company of an English chap who goes by the name of John.

climatereason
Editor
Reply to  krb981
September 10, 2015 12:29 pm

Whatever you might thnk of Mann it is inappropriate to think it is a good idea to send him to present day Syria. It is very sad to see what is happening there. In happier days I stayed at the Baron hotel in Aleppo where agatha Christine once stayed and went round the crusader castles.
It was full of urbane and civilised people who got a govt they didn’t deserve.
Tonyb

Reply to  climatereason
September 10, 2015 12:32 pm

It was full of urbane and civilised people who got a govt they didn’t deserve.
So did we.

asybot
Reply to  climatereason
September 10, 2015 9:58 pm

, The ME for a long time was ( still is I guess) incredibly beautiful, Lebanon, Turkey Syria, Israel, all of them . Where did this all go wrong Even Afghanistan, Egypt, Baghdad and Iran were incredible to visit . The history, the monuments etc . I can’t believe this is all going to hell.

Dog
September 10, 2015 12:26 pm

Hmm,
Isn’t it theorized by anthropologists that the way man evolved into what we are today in part is thanks to rapidly shifting climates and our nomadic drive to scour the Earth?
Wouldn’t that suggest that we’ve always been aware of climate change?

Mark from the Midwest
Reply to  Dog
September 10, 2015 12:49 pm

Yes, I think we’ve always been aware of the climate, early explorers went to no small length to document the natural and social differences between different places. It’s just a symptom of pseudo-intellects to assume that they’re more aware than all others past and present

george e. smith
Reply to  Mark from the Midwest
September 10, 2015 6:55 pm

Positive proof that climate changes. No matter how many Californias those nomads found, they always discovered there was a still better place out there; and the place they were, actually sucked..
g

Lady Gaiagaia
Reply to  Dog
September 10, 2015 12:59 pm

During the fastest deglaciation pulses, sea level rises 30 to 60 mm per year. Coastal dwellers would notice this in even a brief human life time (1.2 to 2.4 meters in 40 years).
Climate change however doesn’t always occur rapidly enough to be noticeable, as during long spells of the Holocene. People did indeed note deteriorating conditions during the LIA.
Like other African animals, humans evolved in response to climate change during the Pliocene and Pleistocene. The spread of grasslands and retreat of forests led to selection in favor of bipedalism, as evinced by the evolution of australopithecines from more standard ape locomotion, freeing the hands. More cooling and drying led to genus Homo, which spread out of Africa.

September 10, 2015 12:31 pm

vainglory
[veyn-glawr-ee, -glohr-ee, veyn-glawr-ee, -glohr-ee]
noun
1. excessive elation or pride over one’s own achievements, abilities, etc.; boastful vanity.
2. empty pomp or show.
c.1300, “worthless glory,” waynglori, from Old French vaine glorie, from Medieval Latin vana gloria (see vain + glory (n.)).

September 10, 2015 12:35 pm

Author, note: “noble cause corruption” is an oxymoron. A noble cause is a good thing and cannot be bad. There is no noble cause in this so-called “noble cause corruption.” Please find another term. For example, something as simple as “false heroism” or “faux nobility” or “faux science”—perhaps “treachery” is the best of all. Using a flaccid term weakens our argument.

Mark from the Midwest
Reply to  Poems of Our Climate
September 10, 2015 12:50 pm

How about stupid

mike restin
Reply to  Mark from the Midwest
September 11, 2015 9:54 am

appropriate…

John Herron
Reply to  Poems of Our Climate
September 11, 2015 4:07 am

Just a thought, but I was up late watching the Ken Burns “The Civil War” history. Did the die hard Confederates like Jubal Early and the Knights of the Golden Circle (founders of the KKK) call their failed madness the “Noble Cause”?

Zeke
Reply to  John Herron
September 11, 2015 8:03 am

As a result of the victory of the Union, this amendment was included in all of the Territories and new western states:
No person shall be put to forced labor or involuntary servitude, except in the case of felony.
That amendment was already present in many of the northern states. Thanks to the generation that finally settled that question.

Gamecock
September 10, 2015 12:38 pm

“Just two centuries ago, humanity barely understood that a planet’s climate could change at all.”
Just 50 years ago, humanity knew the definition of “climate,” and would recognize immediately that “a planet’s climate” is stoopid.

Resourceguy
September 10, 2015 12:51 pm

We have entered the era of PT Barnum science.

dp
September 10, 2015 12:55 pm

Climate science is the gentle art of making a natural and on-going process look evil and man-made without looking like a kook. All the low hanging fruit has been plucked from this tree and they’re now revealing the underlying madness that drives them. The best example is climate nutter Al Gore who has the carbon footprint of a military fortress and a climate message delivered with a Cheshire Cat smile. It is this population of bitter limousine climate alarmists who demand laws requiring others to conform to a low-carbon lifestyle that are particularly interesting. Why are they never the first or even the last to conform to their own beliefs?

L5Rick
September 10, 2015 12:55 pm

Has anyone looked at the original article?
Where does the chart come from? It looks rather contrived to me.

Reply to  L5Rick
September 10, 2015 1:36 pm

The chart is part of WUWT’s commentary about the article. Direct quotes from the article are in the blue boxes.

Reply to  L5Rick
September 10, 2015 1:39 pm

The chart is part of WUWT’s commentary about the article. Direct quotes from the article are in the blue boxes.
You can search the internet and find that chart. It did not originate here.

September 10, 2015 1:04 pm

Some Coryphaeus of Science.

September 10, 2015 1:16 pm

Not hubris at all……………………
Weapons grade mental is what it is.

Bruce Cobb
September 10, 2015 1:27 pm

The greatest human achievement of all time will be, against all odds, and with all the political and economic power along with tools of spreading propaganda stacked massively against them, the defeat of Climatism; the most destructive ideology in human history.

Sam The First
September 10, 2015 1:28 pm

This is what happens when Governments contrive to dumb down education, so that very few people are taught any history, or any science. Those emerging from College not only have no capacity to identify falsehoods – they can’t very well stop themselves from perpetuating them.
They have no sense of proportion, and no historical perspective. And they lack the tools even to know what science truly is – yet they can infiltrate the media and take on the role of opinion formers and ‘pundits’.
Often, the excuse given for this dumbing down is that such subjects as history and science are ‘not relevant’ to kids’ lives. Yet without any solid basis of knowledge in these fields, young adults vote for politicians who are equally ignorant, and whose policies affect us all.
Whether this dumbing down is deliberate on the part of our masters, I leave you to decide.

asybot
Reply to  Sam The First
September 10, 2015 10:12 pm

@ Sam The First ( hopefully not the last, you make sense). Around the mid eighty period my wife and I were bringing up three kids and found out that exact problem. The dumbing down started I think even before that time frame, to us the early to mid 60’s? ( The ” love” period?). Drugs and a dismissal of teachers and profs in the universities. And it is deliberate there is no doubt in our minds at all and it is still happening. These days it is probably worse just check out “Spring Break” in most western countries these days. And the students that do graduate are so to the left it is astounding to see. Think about it and look at the set-up in places like McD/Burger King and other franchises like them. They may look like capitalists . But to us it is lock step with the “factory” otherwise you don’t get anywhere. Clones.

Stephen Richards
September 10, 2015 1:29 pm

Greatest achievement next to burnt rice pudding and curdled crème anglais

Luke
September 10, 2015 1:38 pm

“In short, climate science is supposedly one of the greatest achievements of mankind, after all, the IPCC awarded the Nobel Prize in 2007 to a couple of guys named Al Gore and Rajenda K. Pachauri, both of which have had sex scandals, and Pachauri had to step down as head of the IPCC.”
Really Anthony?
An ad hominem argument is one that is used to counter another argument; but, it is based on feelings or prejudice, rather than facts, reason or logic. It is often a personal attack on one’s character rather than an attempt to address the issue at hand.

Bruce Cobb
Reply to  Luke
September 10, 2015 2:17 pm

Ironic, innit? You wouldn’t normally expect to find moral depravity in those claiming to be “saviors of the planet”. But there you are.

Dawtgtomis
Reply to  Luke
September 10, 2015 8:55 pm

Luke did you really read Sagan’s baloney detector? touche!
Now you must apply those rules (without bias) to both sides of the argument.
I think Anthony’s point was that if these men are willing to practice deceit in their own lives, what credibility do they hold as global planners?
How do their achievements rank with things like the wheel, fire. the plow, grain threshing machines, steam power, internal combustion engines, electricity, flight, nuclear power, or rocket science?
They successfully brought to the public’s attention that climate changes! And, were instrumental in forming a religion which postulates the creation of CO2 as the omnipotent destroyer of “normal” climate and weather. They helped to propagate the myth of sufficient energy density in solar and wind to power the 21st century world.
That record will no doubt pale in comparison to the achievements of Louis Pasteur or Gregor Mendel when history reviews the benefits to humanity.
Honest climate science can help the future population adapt to cyclical changes, but control of the elements is well beyond our grasp for now. Try to drop your idealism and see reality, lad!

PMT
Reply to  Luke
September 11, 2015 12:31 am

I won’t try and parse the offending statement as it is a mess. It not only contains an ad-hominem, which shouldn’t be there, it is factually incorrect.
The Nobel Peace Prize 2007 was awarded jointly to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr.
Anthony please rewrite it.

Chris Hanley
September 10, 2015 1:46 pm

“Just two centuries ago, humanity barely understood that a planet’s climate could change at all …”.
==============================================
How could they?
Michael Mann proved that it didn’t and hadn’t:
http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/Images/Hockey_stick_chart_ipcc_475_tcm4-650054.jpg
(that was a joke).

Resourceguy
Reply to  Chris Hanley
September 10, 2015 2:20 pm

Unfortunately a majority of non WUWT readers don’t even get the joke and those officials that demoted Mann from the pinnacle of IPCC science exposure are not even going to tell them.

Tom O
September 10, 2015 1:58 pm

I think many people missed the true part of the statement. It is this –
“testaments to the creative power of the human imagination.”
Climate science owes its entire existence to the “creative power of human imagination,” and not one bit to the realities of climate and its evolution. And it has tried to take off with the same blazing glory as a Saturn 5 lifting a space capsule towards the Moon. And what is even better, they got to pass this fairy tale off as “science!” Now THAT is imagination and creativity plugged into the theory of relativity!.

Pedio
September 10, 2015 2:09 pm

The Nobility of the cause outweighs the science every time!

Dawtgtomis
Reply to  Pedio
September 10, 2015 9:05 pm

Quite so, the ideological agenda has left science in it’s dust!

hunter
September 10, 2015 2:12 pm

Climate science is right up there with eugenics and polywater.

September 10, 2015 2:12 pm

Here’s what I posted at NPR :

“a triumph of human civilization” !
There is no greater quantifiably provable falsehood in all of this Lysenko redux than James Hansen’s claim that Venus is an example of a “runaway greenhouse effect” . Basic undergraduate calculations of radiative balance show that NO physical spectrum comes within an order of magnitude of explaining Venus’s surface temperature 225% that of a gray ( flat spectrum ) ball in orbit next to it . ( By comparison , our surface temperature is about 3% warmer than the 279 Kelvin of a gray body in our orbit and has varied about 0.3% since the steam engine . ) See my presentation , with all calculations succinctly expressed in a freely available APL , of the more than century old basic physics at http://climateconferences.hear… . Validating the 19th century experiments leading to these computations and demonstrating the falsehood of Hansen’s claim would make a smashing highschool science project . If you disagree with my analysis , show me your equations . I have zero respect for any non-quantitative word-waving .
At the time of that talk , all I knew was that Hansen’s claim that Venus’s extreme temperature was due to a greenhouse , ie , spectral , effect was quantitatively absurd . I speculated that it must be due to geothermal heat trapped by the dense atmosphere .
But , a few months ago , in a discussion at http://wattsupwiththat.com/201… , Someone did present the equations : http://hockeyschtick.blogspot…. .
Roughly , in order for the Top of Atmosphere to be in radiative balance with the Sun , The bottom has to be warmer by the gravitational energy represented by the weight of the atmosphere . Any explanation which leaves out this rather precisely calculable energy cannot be correct . Apparently this was standard knowledge in planetary temperature physics in the 1970s .
Rather than being “a triumph of human civilization” , politicized “climate science” will be weighed in history as one of the greatest retardations of science since the establishment’s denial of what Galileo could show anybody who cared to look thru his telescope .

John W. Garrett
Reply to  Bob Armstrong
September 10, 2015 6:46 pm

I saw it and “up-voted” it.
The usual NPR suspects have crawled out of the gutter.

Reply to  Bob Armstrong
September 10, 2015 7:46 pm

NPR, CBS, ABC, NBC, Obama, Kerry, Etc still believe in the “Hockey Stick” . Somehow we have to convince them otherwise. Just keep doing what we are doing.

gary turner
September 10, 2015 2:40 pm

[quote]Quote of the week: climate awareness one of the ‘greatest human achivements’(sp?)[/quote]
Surprised I haven’t seen a correction.
gary

Frank K.
September 10, 2015 2:59 pm

“Well it seems NPR reporter Adam Frank has…”
I stopped reading after that…

September 10, 2015 3:12 pm

From that always credible source, Wiki (/sarc):

The 4.2 kiloyear BP aridification event was one of the most severe climatic events of the Holocene period in terms of impact on cultural upheaval.[1] Starting in ≈2200 BC, it probably lasted the entire 22nd century BC. It is very likely to have caused the collapse of the Old Kingdom in Egypt as well as the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia.[2] The drought may have also initiated southeastward habitat tracking within the Indus Valley Civilization.[3]

Do you think the Egyptians might have noticed something was changing or, as this only refers to the Northern hemisphere, this was just local weather?

Rico L
September 10, 2015 3:23 pm

I put it in roughly the same bucket as alchemy….

September 10, 2015 4:26 pm

My top 2 accomplishments for humanity is (1) written language, (2) electrification. It is ironic that the Warmists want to stop #2 by lying with #1.

asybot
Reply to  donmgibson
September 10, 2015 10:18 pm

@don Great but I add #3 agriculture and they are trying to stop that as well.

Peter Fraser
September 10, 2015 4:59 pm

The achievements mentioned Relativity, DNA and the physics required to land a man on the moon were all scientific theories that were scrutinised, debated and if need be adjusted by scientists and mathematicians over long periods of time before they were finally accepted as true. Sadly this is not the case with climate science which as we all know is “settled”. This alone precludes “climate science” as is understood by the term today (i.e. global warming) from being one of mankind’s greatest achievements since there is no room for debate or modification. “Climate science” is not science it is a religion.

September 10, 2015 5:03 pm

Pride cometh before a fall!
And what a drop that author and NPR broadcaster will take.
Let’s guess the degree? NPR author, liberal arts with a major in radio broadcasting.

John W. Garrett
Reply to  ATheoK
September 10, 2015 6:36 pm

The author is, rather unfortunately, a professional indoctrinator of youth— a putative astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester.
He claims to be an “evangelist of science” and has imbibed large quantities of the climate Kool-Aid.

emsnews
September 10, 2015 5:04 pm

The #1 accomplishment for humanity was the ability to make a fire using rocks (flint). The second was to chip the flint so it could turn into a tool. The third was the ability to use language to explain how to do both.

Reply to  emsnews
September 10, 2015 7:50 pm

Yes! To make fire, releasing “emitting” CO2, the original sin?
We were doomed from the start.

Djozar
Reply to  emsnews
September 11, 2015 5:23 am

The fourth was using the fire to make coffee

herkimer
September 10, 2015 5:04 pm

“Climate science is a triumph of human civilization”. This new science is no human triumph yet and certainly not in the league of DNA or the theory of relativity. Perhaps one day it will mature and become one . It badly needs an infusion of proper scientific approaches not more political money games and wealth distribution…

September 10, 2015 5:33 pm

climate awareness
Just add it to the list of things to tell your parrot:
climate change
climate crisis
climate weirding
climate policy
climate d*nier
climate justice
climate blah blah blah
Don’t forget to change the newspaper

Lady Gaiagaia
Reply to  philincalifornia
September 10, 2015 5:57 pm

How about Climate Change Communication, now an academic “discipline”?
We’re now at second and third order derivatives of the man-made global warming gravy train.

Reply to  Lady Gaiagaia
September 10, 2015 7:10 pm

Yes, and I forgot climate consensus
Mind you, they all converged to Climate Lying many years ago.

Lady Gaiagaia
Reply to  Lady Gaiagaia
September 10, 2015 8:30 pm

Right on!
Climate Change Consensus and CC Communication.
All less worthwhile than the leaning on shovel CCC of FDR.

Reply to  Lady Gaiagaia
September 10, 2015 11:09 pm

… and heading to more prescient and, hopefully vitriolic humans like me, near you:
climate dupe
climate useful idiot
climate useless idiot
climate f*ckwit
climate “how low you can get and still be able to convince your granny’s knitting circle that you’re a scientist” scientist (that would be Trofim Karl, with Michael Mann a close second has-been who never was)

September 10, 2015 5:52 pm

“Just two centuries ago, humanity barely understood that a planet’s climate could change at all”.
I love the double think involved with that statement. Firstly that climate can change and then that it’s somehow aberrant that it should. It’s the steady state environment delusion.
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/the-steady-state-environment-delusion/
Pointman

Gary Pearse
September 10, 2015 6:02 pm

“Climate science is a triumph of human civilization.”
More accurately if not opposed would be: “Climate science is the trump of human civilization.”

emsnews
Reply to  Gary Pearse
September 10, 2015 6:11 pm

Correction: ‘Climate science is the DONALD Trump of human civilization.’ 🙂

Zeke
September 10, 2015 6:16 pm

Quote of the week: climate awareness one of the ‘greatest human achievements’
It appears to be some sort of academic historical paradigm which is written by the academic historical paradigm makers to make the academic historical paradigm makers look useful. (:

Reply to  Zeke
September 10, 2015 7:05 pm

Will it go round in circles ?

Zeke
Reply to  philincalifornia
September 10, 2015 8:20 pm

No, but you can make a paper airplane with it.

Reply to  philincalifornia
September 10, 2015 10:22 pm

Like; smiley face.

johann wundersamer
Reply to  philincalifornia
September 11, 2015 9:38 am

philincalifornia
Will it go round in circles ?
____
phil,
Quote of the week: climate awareness one of the ‘greatest human achievements’
– such sort of academic historical paradigm
sure is made to go round in academic circles.
Hans

Critical Thinker
September 10, 2015 6:25 pm

[Note: Per site policy, please use only one screen name when commenting. Thanks. ~mod.]

H.R.
September 10, 2015 7:01 pm

In my book, food preservation ranks w-a-a-a-y ahead of climate awareness in terms of human achievement. Salting, smoking, and even taking advantage of natural refrigeration such as caves and cold springs were great leaps in the collective wellbeing of humankind.
Oh. Someone above mentioned ‘fire.’ Building on that discovery, barbeque was another great leap in the history of the world and easily beats climate change awareness by 8 furlongs. Heck! I’ll have to put barbeque neck-and-neck with Relativity (with apologies to, Albert E.).

indefatigablefrog
Reply to  H.R.
September 11, 2015 1:32 am

Don’t forget:
Keeping cooked meat and veg. in a lidded pot that is served from and reheated daily. (We use that one in our home).
The pie. (Which clearly preceded the tin, by wrapping the food in an inedible substance called pastry. Even microbes struggle to digest pastry.)
Then also – selective rotting a.k.a. fermentation. i.e. choosing which micro-organism gets to have a go first – as with cheese, beer, wine, miso, tempeh, soya sauce, brine pickles sauerkraut, dill cucumbers etc etc.
One of my favourite topics this, since I live off the grid and do not have a conventional fridge.

H.R.
Reply to  indefatigablefrog
September 11, 2015 2:36 am

Dang, indefatigablefrog! How could I have left out fermentation? Beer and barbeque. Those two would make it on many people’s list of top ten human achievements, eh? Maybe round out their list with the ’57 Chevy? Anything but climate change awareness.
BTW, we had a small orchard when I was young and we had an apple house for storing the apples. We also had a root cellar. We kept our potatoes there ’til the next crop came in. We didn’t make a lot of trips to the grocery store when I was young.

Gary
September 10, 2015 7:22 pm

Well, deluding millions of people and wasting trillions of dollars is a kind of achievement.

ImranCan
September 10, 2015 7:26 pm

“Just two centuries ago, humanity barely understood that a planet’s climate could change at all.”
I mean, honestly, who wrote this crap ?? Inca sacrifices, dances rain gods, Stonehenge, Greeenland, failed harvests of the Maunder minimum, etc etc.

September 10, 2015 7:55 pm

Thanks, Anthony, Marc Morano.
The Adam Frank article is so stupid it shines in the dark.

michael hart
September 10, 2015 8:29 pm

Thanks to the fossil-fueled industrial revolution we
a) live longer, so are more likely to notice a change in climate, and
b) have more opportunity to sit on our derrière and philosophize about climate.

September 10, 2015 9:34 pm

I think climate change IS one of humanities greatest achievements, right up there with the other major world religions….

Lady Gaiagaia
Reply to  Leo Smith
September 10, 2015 9:35 pm

God grant that this false cult lacks the staying power of the major world religions.

indefatigablefrog
September 10, 2015 11:59 pm

Here’s a list of ten great scientific ideas.
Well, they were great until they were not great.
Unfortunately, in the future one of these silly ideas will have to be displaced from the top ten, in order to make room for the theory that a 0.1 degree change in average global temperatures can produce an observable increase in the frequency and severity extreme weather phenomena.
http://listverse.com/2009/01/19/10-debunked-scientific-beliefs-of-the-past/

indefatigablefrog
Reply to  indefatigablefrog
September 11, 2015 12:18 am

I’m not sure that that list included my favourite bonkers theory. Female Hysteria.
In the 1890’s, 97% of papers that made reference to “female hysteria” as a search term agreed with the consensus view that female hysteria was related to the womb. (sarc)comment image

bjc70
September 11, 2015 12:10 am

“Some achievement, King Canute would be proud.”
Anthony, I think you malign King Canute.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Canute_and_the_waves

page488
September 11, 2015 1:57 am

This got bizarre a long time ago. I can’t even think of a word to describe what’s going on now. Will there be anything left of legitimate science 20 years from now.

Clovis Marcus
September 11, 2015 2:32 am

I wonder if the NPR wonk would like to list the ways climate science has made our lives better?
Or even changed things a bit.

David Cage
September 11, 2015 3:01 am

They are right. It has to be the greatest human achievement ever to be able to con so many people of man made climate change based on an analysis of the normal climate that was dated two centuries before.
To add to this the ability to maintain the con faced with data “adjusted ” in exactly the opposite direction to the adjustments that comparison with the reference network and what in the engineering world would be therefore be the standard makes the con an even greater human achievement.
To then add the computer modelling con that is the equivalent of maintaining that painting ships with grey primer speeds them up so much that in a century ships will travel faster than sound based on purely average increases as ships changed from wooden sail to metal steam ones makes the achievement a truly outstanding achievement by any standard. The last one perhaps is a little less obvious but a little thought shows that since the metal grey primed ones go faster and as more become metal steam powered the average increases so clearly projecting the graph we prove that faster than sound ships are inevitable given time.

Warren Latham
September 11, 2015 3:32 am

I clicked on the link to this “story” by Adam Frank and I wish I hadn’t bothered: it has more holes than a tea-strainer.
His website is titled as: “a commentary on science and society” and indeed it is, however, the opinions and the comments in his so-called “story” are poorly written, fanciful, clumsy and biased.
I dare say his GRANT MONEY application improved his bank balance, courtesy of the Great Global Warming Gravy Train.

Jacob Neilson
September 11, 2015 4:49 am

I notice the collage of achievements at the top of the article includes the Pantheon dome. Excellent. What a wonderful building. A must see for any visitor to Rome, expecially on a snowy day, assuming we’ll still get snow….. 🙂

emsnews
September 11, 2015 5:47 am

Sigh…the lack of historical references when we see garbage like the NPR story written by this guy who went to college and got a degree (communication degrees are a joke, of course)…is very annoying.
Way back when I went to college and first, due to winning a scholarship to study German in Germany by taking severe tests and coming out #1 when I was 16, I studied history with an exciting range of professors both in Europe and when I returned to the US.
We had intense sessions with the students, ourselves, bringing in documentation, books, science reports, etc. to debate all sorts of periods in earth’s history and human history, it was quite exciting and very challenging and we would go to various sites to dig up first hand information which meant all sorts of adventures, etc.
Then suddenly beginning in 1974, and then gathering steam very rapidly, all the major German departments of major and minor universities vanished like snow during ‘global warming.’
I was out of work! Even in NY state, all the schools eliminated all the major parts of foreign language departments! I couldn’t believe my eyes. And this has harmed scholarship greatly and spread to other fields, only some of the hard sciences have escaped this (guess where I went later: to RPI and hard stuff that remains stubbornly real!).

EdA the New Yorker
Reply to  emsnews
September 11, 2015 7:33 am

Emsnews,
Your time frame seems about right. The National Commission on Excellence in Education (Grace Commission) reported in 1983, under the title, A Nation At Risk, “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”
http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/risk.html

Hilary Ostrov (aka hro001)
September 11, 2015 6:27 am

I’m sure this will come as a great shock to many, but in my exploration of the more recent version of the MyWorld stats (i.e. Sep. 10), I see that “Action taken on climate change” is still at rock bottom of the list, while the vote count is now over 8 million.
During my explorations yesterday, I had stumbled across a related subset of data called “Peoples’ Voices Challenge”.
Here comes the shocker, folks …It seems that the wizards operating in the bowels of the UN have found a way (via this subset) to bring “Action taken on climate change” to the very TOP of this (now very familiar) list! Amazing, eh?!
My evidence (and the rather winding path which eventually led me to it) can be viewed at:
Refugees rioting while UN playing and plying climate number games

Matt G
September 11, 2015 6:38 am

One of the catastrophes of recent climate science has been trying to reinvent the wheel, but instead making it square. Including making a field that is shambolic when it comes to science and reinventing the scientific method. Apart from that and the appalling standards in recording surface data, it’s been a triumph of human civilization.

H.R.
Reply to  Matt G
September 11, 2015 7:30 am

Matt G, one of the great achievements in human history was the triangular wheel, which replaced the square wheel, thus eliminating one bump.

Pamela Gray
September 11, 2015 8:05 am

We don’t feel much of the affects of weather change anymore. Why? We are no longer in the business of preparing for such change. Yet that preparation continues, just not as much in individual households. The only difference between folks shopping at a modern grocery store and ancient peoples is the fact that years of plenty were used to stockpile grain, and make dried meat, fruits and vegetables to last through years of drought all done right outside the tentflap.
Consider pemmican: It is an ancient recipe that serves the purpose of a modern grocery store. No difference there. We eat preserved food all the time. We just have to drive a ways to get it and when we get there it is all done for us.
http://paleofood.com/pemmican.htm#old
Consider ancient texts: Human-sin caused drought and floods are everywhere, along with the admonition to stock up. No difference there. We blame humans for climate change all the time.
http://www.openbible.info/topics/drought
http://www.openbible.info/topics/floods
So I disagree with the modern miracle. If anything, climate scientists are no further down the road than ancient preachers.

Zeke
Reply to  Pamela Gray
September 11, 2015 8:18 am

Nice list of verses. Just one more. Y’shua said, “But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”
So no throwing climate scientists down volcanoes, tempting though it may be.

Zeke
Reply to  Zeke
September 11, 2015 8:20 am

correction: throwing climate scientists down volcanoes to stop climate change

Richmond
September 11, 2015 2:27 pm

It has been claimed that some aboriginal populations would sacrifice virgins by throwing them into a volcano, which was a waste of perfectly good virgins. I doubt that any climate scientist can be considered a virgin after $crewing the public out of tax money in the form of wasted research grants. Throwing climate scientists into a volcano would probably upset volcanologists and make the volcano gods angry. On the other hand, sending them do research into hand feeding polar bears would be an option.