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.
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.
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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Greatest achievement next to burnt rice pudding and curdled crème anglais
“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.
Ironic, innit? You wouldn’t normally expect to find moral depravity in those claiming to be “saviors of the planet”. But there you are.
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!
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.
“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).
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.
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!.
The Nobility of the cause outweighs the science every time!
Quite so, the ideological agenda has left science in it’s dust!
Climate science is right up there with eugenics and polywater.
Here’s what I posted at NPR :
I saw it and “up-voted” it.
The usual NPR suspects have crawled out of the gutter.
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.
[quote]Quote of the week: climate awareness one of the ‘greatest human achivements’(sp?)[/quote]
Surprised I haven’t seen a correction.
gary
“Well it seems NPR reporter Adam Frank has…”
I stopped reading after that…
From that always credible source, Wiki (/sarc):
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?
I put it in roughly the same bucket as alchemy….
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.
@don Great but I add #3 agriculture and they are trying to stop that as well.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes! To make fire, releasing “emitting” CO2, the original sin?
We were doomed from the start.
The fourth was using the fire to make coffee
“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…
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
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.
Yes, and I forgot climate consensus
Mind you, they all converged to Climate Lying many years ago.
Right on!
Climate Change Consensus and CC Communication.
All less worthwhile than the leaning on shovel CCC of FDR.
… 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)
“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
“Climate science is a triumph of human civilization.”
More accurately if not opposed would be: “Climate science is the trump of human civilization.”
Correction: ‘Climate science is the DONALD Trump of human civilization.’ 🙂
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. (:
Will it go round in circles ?
No, but you can make a paper airplane with it.
Like; smiley face.
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
[Note: Per site policy, please use only one screen name when commenting. Thanks. ~mod.]
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.).
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.
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.
Well, deluding millions of people and wasting trillions of dollars is a kind of achievement.
“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.
Thanks, Anthony, Marc Morano.
The Adam Frank article is so stupid it shines in the dark.