Guest Essay by Eric Worrall
Piers Sellers is a NASA climate scientist with Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer. His dying wish is that we should listen to his concerns about CO2 – but with the greatest respect, he is not saying anything new.
Cancer and Climate Change
I’M a climate scientist who has just been told I have Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
This diagnosis puts me in an interesting position. I’ve spent much of my professional life thinking about the science of climate change, which is best viewed through a multidecadal lens. At some level I was sure that, even at my present age of 60, I would live to see the most critical part of the problem, and its possible solutions, play out in my lifetime. Now that my personal horizon has been steeply foreshortened, I was forced to decide how to spend my remaining time. Was continuing to think about climate change worth the bother?
…
Last year may also be seen in hindsight as the year of the Death of Denial. Globally speaking, most policy makers now trust the scientific evidence and predictions, even as they grapple with ways to respond to the problem. And most Americans — 70 percent, according to a recent Monmouth University poll — believe that the climate is changing. So perhaps now we can move on to the really hard part of this whole business.
…
As for me, I’ve no complaints. I’m very grateful for the experiences I’ve had on this planet. As an astronaut I spacewalked 220 miles above the Earth. Floating alongside the International Space Station, I watched hurricanes cartwheel across oceans, the Amazon snake its way to the sea through a brilliant green carpet of forest, and gigantic nighttime thunderstorms flash and flare for hundreds of miles along the Equator. From this God’s-eye-view, I saw how fragile and infinitely precious the Earth is. I’m hopeful for its future.
And so, I’m going to work tomorrow.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/opinion/sunday/cancer-and-climate-change.html
As someone who has also been at death’s door, when my appendix ruptured two years ago, I have the deepest sympathy with Pier’s condition. Its horrible to look at your loved ones, and know that this might be the last time you see them.
However, it is disturbing that Sellers would attempt to use his dire personal health issues as an appeal to emotion, to promote his views about climate change. Science is supposed to be about reason, logic and evidence, not desperate appeals for sympathy. To me, Sellers’ attempt to conflate empathy for his condition, with an appeal for climate action, betrays the weakness of his science, and is symptomatic of the utter fanaticism which I believe lies at the heart of the climate craze.
When I was in hospital, I wasn’t thinking about the subject of my next climate post. I had other things on my mind.
“Last year may also be seen in hindsight as the year of the Death of Denial. Globally speaking ”
This rather proves how totally out-of-touch he is on the GW subject Globally speaking.
He was a Climate MODEL scientist, that tells you all you need to know !!
But yet true to form even at this point, note the words “may” “in hindsight”
real maple syrup with the waffle words please.
michael
MMMMMMMMMmmmmm…Real Canadian maple syrup !! LOL
Alright Marcus, don’t go getting all mushy on us now!
Think about it. NASA today is but a vestige of what it was in 1969; people playing with space-things and trying desperately to retain funding by spinning “meaning” that justifies their jobs.
What better “model,” (pardon evil pun) for the rent-seeking syndrome that drives alarmism?
Saw “The Big Short” last night. Read the book years ago when it first came out so I knew the story. Excellent movie. The CAGW cabal are the banks and brokerage firms riding high on an illusion. NOAA and NCDC are doing to the temperature record what S&P did to the bond ratings.
Read another interesting book, “The Emperor of All Maladies,” the history of cancer. The book hit home with me since last June I was diagnosed with CML. There are a couple of chapters on the cancerous carnage of tobacco and the tobacco industry. CAGW tries to demonize skeptics as similar to the tobacco industry. Sounds like transference to me. It is the CAGW crowd on the defensive, trying to choke off debate and discussion, fabricating, falsifying, climate gating.
CAGW is a scientific bubble with a needle in the future, possibly near future. Too bad we can’t figure out who and when to short sell and make a billion bucks.
RIGVIR.com
well worth a go to
and for those who only accept the pharma etc side
its legit and used widely and works..in EU
why the hell we waste billions when proven products are out there- just not FDA bribed to market…
Having worked on Wall St. at the start of the Mortgage Backed Securities era, and having traded them quite profitably in those early years, I truly enjoyed “The Big Short”. It was well told and offered a clear understandable explanation of the MBS. The social behavior of those blindly promoting and over trading/over analyzing the mortgages was eerily similar to the climate obsessed behavior of today, as you note. Good catch.
I am so sorry to hear about your diagnosis and wish you a complete remission and cure.
“I saw how fragile …. the Earth is”. It seems pretty robust to me.
Earth does pretty well. I think some of the astronaut experience involves realizing that nearly all life on Earth depends on essentially a thin film of chlorophyll.
I guess that argues we should feed it better. 🙂
Indeed, It’s the ISS that is fragile. Not The Earth.
As George Carlin says, ” The Earth isn’t going anywhere, we are ” !! LOL
Here’s the way I see it. If you use your last gasp to tell someone, “My husband shot me”. The court may ignore the hearsay objection from his lawyer, but it will still require a bullet hole.
Yes!
+100
I’m not particularly impressed with this. Any intelligent, diligent scientist can very easily see that CAGW is wrong. Yet the professional rewards for promoting it are vast. Having done so for however many years, now he finds he is dying. Is he going to confess his dishonesty and/or carelessness in examining the evidence now? A better man would. A small man will simply go on promoting the case to go on collecting kudos until it no longer matters to him. The “tell” that this is what he is doing is his comment:
“And most Americans — 70 percent, according to a recent Monmouth University poll — believe that the climate is changing.”
Well DUH! Climate is always changing! Every (sane) skeptic and every alarmist and every (sane) informed person of no opinion about CAGW believes “climate is changing”. This man must know that a belief about climate changing is not any indication of belief in the alarmist scare. Yet he misconstrues it as support for his position. This gives every indication of very carefully worded misdirection; even in his extreme state, he still shows no sign of speaking from the heart. Seems like nothing more than dishonesty to the very end.
He didn’t dare say the verboten words: global warming. None of them say this now. It is quite deliberate.
“
Ron House
January 17, 2016 at 3:40 am
I’m not particularly impressed with this. Any intelligent, diligent scientist… ”
You just eliminated virtually all of the supposed scientists that support CAGW.
Hate to say it but there are a lot of people on this site with illness and age related disease and cancer that post here regularly. So, yes, the death of some denialism is certain. For some of us who have been given a particular probabilistic time frame, we won’t live to see the results of the discussion. But really, it is a poor argument that endeavours to gain sympathy through whining about the state of anyone’s Heath. That doesn’t change the science. It has been argued about for some generations now. It may be several generations before the issue is resolved. Any one person’s health is irrelevant since every single person who has ever posted on this site could be dead before the science is “settled”.
Sad in two ways, both his personal situation that I wouldn’t wish on anyone and the fact that what he considers his life’s work is turning out to be not only a waste of time but real damage to real people.
He’s going to work tomorrow? What an absolute loon. Doesn’t he have a bucket list or something?
I was teaching teachers in China and I asked the question ‘ What would you do if you new you had one month to live?’
An answer
“I would have a good rest’
WTF
Sorry. ‘.Knew’ .I’m supposed to be an English teacher (hang head in shame)
As a fellow teacher I find some of the best teaching points come from my own mistakes. Forgive yourself 🙂
We gnu what you meant.
Alex, what was that about a ‘.canoe’ . ?
“We gnu what you meant.”
gnu =“GNU’s Not Unix.”
🙂
Reminds me of the lady from Tennessee who just won $300 million dollars, and is going to go to work anyway.
Many put themselves in cages of their own making, that they can never break free of.
At the very least, both show a startling lack of imagination for how many interesting, satisfying, or useful ways to spend one’s time, even knowing better than most how short it is.
There should be a simple test for lottery winners of such large amounts of money. Just ask them “Are you going to continue to work?” If they answer “Yes”, they don’t get the money being too stupid to know what to do with it.
🙂
It is likely that I also would continue to work if I won the lottery. I’d take a vacation but otherwise life goes on. I enjoy work and I provide meaningful service to others by doing so.
Tom in Florida, agree 100%. If you depend on going to work for your self-worth then you can continue to do so without the extra money.
Michael, if you enjoy your work that much, it is not really work then, is it?
But, do you not have any ideas for starting a business of your own (assuming you do not own one already…if you do, that is not really the same as what I was referring to…going to a job), or travelling, or setting up a charitable institution and running that?
$300 million is enough to give away, conservatively, $15 million a year without spending any of the original 300, or making risky investments.
I would likely spend much of my time reading, writing, taking classes, travelling, collecting rare plants, setting up a botanical garden of rare plants to be preserved in perpetuity (faster than I am already very slowly doing), and doing charitable endeavors of as many sorts as I had time for.
Going into work (for a day, anyway) could be a sign of loyalty and dedication, of valued friendships, not wanting to leave without handing over the reins cleanly to someone else. And gloating. Don’t forget gloating!
Oh, yes. Definitely show up to quit.
Do not want to be all abrupt. Just fairly abrupt.
If they asked very nicely I would consider sticking around while they interviewed replacements.
Plus there are a few people I would want to give enough money to, so they could retire early.
Too many fantastic sights in the world to see. With that level of economic freedom, one could travel in luxury while seeing the most awe-inspiring places our great blue orb has to offer.
In endurance horse riding we have a saying: “You can rest when you die.” Not always possible but we can try.
$300 million is plenty enough to take up a fun sounding sport like endurance horse riding.
I think I should like to have a horse and take it riding on spring mornings at Playalinda Beach.
Going to work at some humdrum job is what people do when they have to do it, IMO.
I have always loved and enjoyed everything I have ever been involved with, and in that I feel very lucky and blessed. Some people hate everything they do, no matter how many times they switch jobs.
Student, nurseryman, renovating historic mansions, repairing high voltage underwater electrical equipment, electrical safety instructor…I have done these and lots more, and never regretted the time spent. But I would try new things very much more often, and travel widely, if I was wealthy. I would not go to a job working for someone else if I did not have to.
What a cheap shot this is. I will give him a small benefit of doubt considering his profession as a trained Astronaut and a ‘climate *%#4)?^!$$$t.’ But to me it reeks of political manipulation from someone who was manipulated or shoved into this statement of his… Whatever the benefit. Perhaps obama care wasn’t working out for him in his condition and he is getting some extra consideration for his stated position on climate.
What a horrible thought…But not actually out of bounds considering the current state of the BS, lies, manipulation, complete crap coming out of the Government funded and controlled climate science and the obama administration. I do not believe anything he or anyone in the government says any longer.
It occurs to me that it seems I am becoming aware of my having been sort of in a brainwashed state of mind over the last quite a few years or so. Realizing now how much this political correctness and associated similar BS has had an effect on my thinking as ‘being just a normal state of things’. It is not and it is quite refreshing to listen to some of it and to be aware just how much BS it really is. These days, I question with a very large amount weight on my BS meter, anything any politician, group, government official, news organization, authority, etc, etc. has to say. The effect is one of having become immune to a situation or the way of normalizing everyday things that we become immune to them and begin adjusting to or accepting them as normal and acceptable. The light has come on and brightened, shining a light and awareness of much of the crap and PC BS that is being constantly thrown at us. I hope others are waking up to some of this as well. I blame it on much of the media and liberal groups who push their out of bounds agendas on the public as being acceptable. Why isn’t Hillary currently in prison for violating so many obvious laws and regulations? Laws that if you or I had violated we would be sitting in prison for life without a doubt right now. Why isn’t obama being impeached for his many violations of the Constitution and other laws when other Presidents would have been run through the ringer for and ran out of office? Why isn’t there a huge outrage about Iran getting the green light for it’s nuke program and today getting 150 billion dollars to wreak hell on the world? We have become immune and the media and the people we elected to office conspire to keep us stupid, quiet, uninformed and accepting of outrageous situations.
Thanks for reading…Wake up you zombies!!! The reason there’s so many zombie shows out these days is so that you will feel more comfortable with like minded people on TV and continue to be complacent. ; ) Sarc
I feel exactly the same way and it has taken a few years to come to that realization.
And the people responsible for us thinking this way can’t figure out why one particular candidate for the nomination is doing so well…
Hah! Y’mean crap like “gender is fluid, and whatever you believe you want to be?” Last time I looked, it was pretty damn biological. Look down, and you’re either a yin or a yang. I actually got thrown off a sport-oriented forum for daring to say so . . . which I consider a feather in my cap!
I just can never understand why the thinnest skinned person in the world now gets to make the rules that everyone else must follow.
Plus, I suspect most of the people who act offended are now doing so just for attention, and are not really offended in any meaningful way at all.
Actually they’ve annexed the word “gender” instead of using the proper word “sex”. Gender means masculine and feminine, behaviors. Sex means male and female, physical traits. Transgender just means putting on a dress if you’re a dude. Transsexual requires surgery and hormone treatments. Every time I hear someone say transgender when they mean transsexual, I shake my head ruefully.
And transvestite actually means the choice of wearing a mans style vest or a womans style vest. Pant suits are a sexless and gender neutral style of clothing… There is no specific word for it yet, but if there was one it would describe someone who has given up on, or lost all semblance of a gender, yet still, for personal and political gain, speaks as an authority for others about that which is no longer a reality…Similar to roll playing, where the participants endow the individual players with a fantasy, pseudo-realistic authority for the character which the player has chosen to become.
What? /Sarc…? Help me out menicholas
No worries, you are doing fine.
Although, the “vest” in transvestite, I always took to be short for vestments, another word for clothing in general, although it does have other specific meanings, such as in particular the liturgical garments of clergy.
But I do not think it means that specific sort of clothing…at least…it may not…unless…um nevermind.
Perhaps he should talk to the only scientist to have walked on the moon. Or the engineer who built Spaceship One.
It’s always sad to hear that a man will die from cancer. But it’s also sad that he will live the rest of his life deluded by this poisonous nonsense. Fortunately many Apollo-era astronauts and engineers do not suffer from this delusion.
Chris
Chris ; Sellers must believed in the new UN / USDA Food Guide Lines created with Fake Science; By Sen., George McGovern.in the late 60;s. It also happens that Sen., Albert Gore Senior was part of this discussion. Go to the 18 minute mark to the 28 min. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRe9z32NZHY
I nearly lost it when I read that “Friends of the Earth,” an eco-loon dot-org, actually influenced the Govt’s “what to eat” chart with their “carbon footprint” crap. More “consensus” “science,” aka political lobbying for more revenue.
If Piers has his way, there is going to be far less wealth around to tackle cancer and other problems that are far more deadly than climate change.
The diversion of billions of dollars of research money to climate pseudoscience during the past 15 years may have already had an effect on our ability to treat pancreatic cancer.
The thing that’s bothersome is: Why should we listen to an astronaut on any topic of scientific importance? Astronauts are not selected based on their scientific acumen. in fact it is often the opposite. When you have a gasket blow out in a zero gravity environment you don’t want someone who sits and “ponders” the possible alternatives. All one need do is look at John Glen, and his experience with Keating to know that once these guys get outside of the narrow confines that are required of their aerospace training they are often in over their head.
Apparently climate scientists are not selected for their scientific acumen either, or we would not be in this ridiculous and expensive debacle.
Mark, keep in mind that what we call astronauts include not only command pilots but also mission specialist who are scientists. However I would agree that they do need to stick to their respective areas of expertise.
At least he was not an actor who pretends to be knowledgeable of a subject because he played a part in a movie.
“Why should we listen to an astronaut on any topic of scientific importance?”
Astronauts are the pointy end of the spear of a massive engineering and scientific effort. They must trust the scientists and engineers that built the rocket and gave the whole venture a purpose. Astronauts also tend to be drawn from the ranks of the military where trust and obedience is a vital and essential quality.
The carbon footprint of a rocket launch is doubtless substantial. But it could also save humanity someday.
There are things we know “intellectually” that we don’t really know “personally” until it affects us personally. Everyone knows we’re going to die, but most people are generally shocked to learn that they personally are going to die, and how and within what time frame.
We have a whole community of scientists who have recently discovered that climate changes, and now one of them has discovered that the human condition isn’t a permanent Edenic steady-state either. Both conditions are typically blamed on humanity’s sins.
I regard this as a general failure of Western culture and belief systems to fully accept our physical reality. For all our proclamations of independent thinking, genuinely humanist feelings and impulses, and real desire to make the world a better place, when the world affects us personally we still become bewildered children of Adam and Eve standing outside the gate to the Garden wondering just how stupid our parents could have been to have left us in this condition.
It is the ancient question, isn’t it? What will our own response be like when we contemplate our impending arrival at ‘our long home’?
Over the years I’ve observed friends and relatives take the floor to perform that final dance. The ones whose lingering death you could describe as being more ‘successful’ than others have departed best when they have tried, as well as they were able, to put friends and loved ones at ease.
Why place unimportant extraneous worry on your loved ones? They will have enough to cope with in the coming days.
Rick, another cogent and insightful view.
Agreed.
Sellers states… ” And most Americans — 70 percent, according to a recent Monmouth University poll — believe that the climate is changing.”
Wow, I’m very disturbed that only 70 % of people know that the climate changes ! The climate has been changing for about 4.5 billion years.. That means 30% of people , like Peters, are the REAL climate change deni*rs, who think the climate has never changed before !! Sad…
Marcus I bet 95% believed the Government High Carb / Low Fat Diet is health. That is way Chronic Disease is so Prevalent including all CANCERS. Sorry to bring this up all the time but the Government Lied / just like their doing on Climate.
+10!
The question of whether one “believes the climate is changing” is not an honest one. It is a “gotcha” question. We skeptics/climate realists know what they mean by “climate change”, and it has nothing to do with what climate has always done. Therefore, those who answered “no” to their question were, likely in most cases simply gainsaying the question.
But many who answered “yes” may well have been climate realists who answered honestly, and are now being used out of the context of what they actually think.
This is apparently the poll referenced:
https://www.monmouth.edu/assets/0/32212254770/32212254991/32212254992/32212254994/32212254995/30064771087/bbab2f4a-3eef-4772-9b82-8fbdd996452a.pdf
The actual question was: “Do you think that the world’s climate is undergoing a change that is causing more extreme weather patterns and the rise of sea levels, or is this not happening?”
So I would have to go with the 22% who answered “no” (8% didn’t know). Yes the climate is changing, and yes it’s probably causing a steady (not increasing) rate of sea level rise, but no it’s not leading to more extreme weather.
I think this overly complicated question would work better as three simpler questions:
(1) Is the climate changing? Yes
(1a) If yes, is climate change causing an increasing rate of sea level rise? No
(1b) If yes, is climate change causing more extreme weather patterns? No
That Sellers puts any credence in such a sloppy poll is indicative of confused thinking. In the time left to him perhaps he should “think” a little harder about the “science” of climate change.
For what it is worth, I never quote polls to make a point. Only do so in response to others who quote them, and rarely even then.
90% of polls ask loaded questions…the other half can prove anything.
Menicholas – Yep, with “questions” like theirs, it’s heads they win, tails we lose.
Marcus
“…who think the climate has never changed before !! Sad…”
The fundamental premise of the hockey stick argument and IPCC AR5 Fig 6.1 calcs is that prior to mankind’s anthropogenic contributions the atmospheric CO2 concentration was effectively constant, steady state, unchanging, sinks and sources and reservoirs all in wonderful balance. Suddenly and for no apparent natural reason at least to them CO2 step change increased between 1750 to 2011. Ergo & ipso facto anthropogenic must be the only explanation. However mankind’s C output in the same time frame was 555 GtC, equivalent to twice the hockey blade ppm increase (8.9 Ptg/y). Oh, what to do? Well, kick half of it, 315 GtC, (4.9 Ptg/y) under the rug by claiming some suddenly appearing natural sinking crawling out of the ooze, Table 6.1, with uncertainties orders of magnitude large than anthro’s share. So in order to make it all balance IPCC AR5 partitioned the anthro portion 57% sequestered/43% retained. How convenient. How totally dry-labbed. World Bank 4C and IGSS have slightly different partitions. so much for consensus.
See my other postings about the three failures of CAGW.
” Too bad we can’t figure out who and when to short sell and make a billion bucks.”
Warren Buffett already did. After hurricane Katrina, the AGW brigade planted the idea that extreme hurricanes and more hurricanes were the way of the future,
Buffett bought casualty insurance companies. They collected increased premiums as the result of all the hype. There have been no hurricanes touching down in Florida for the last 10 years.Thus, his companies pocketed the high premiums and did not have to pay anything out.
Yes indeedy, and premiums absolutely skyrocketed…and have remained high ever since.
Good eye, Walt.
Yes they did however wind insurance also covers other wind events such as what we had over the last two days and nights here in Sarasota and Manatee Counties. Homeowners around the area are glad they had that insurance I am sure. Personally, my wind insurance is lower this year after being fairly flat for a few years. And don’t forget that insurance companies reinvest portions of those premiums providing capital for others. The returns on those investments are used to help keep premiums lower than they ordinarily would be.
He’s certainly no scientist. No true scientist would spout the pure drivel he did in this editorial. What he comes off as is a True Believer running through all the talking points of what has all the hallmarks of a religion. He thinks the planet is in trouble, and we are the cause, so therefore we have to “save the planet”. How noble. And idiotic.
He’s a “Government Scientist”.
A “Government Scientist” need not be scientific,
but he must be politically correct.
“I saw how fragile and infinitely precious the Earth is…”
Please!
The only thing ” fragile ” is his mental state !!
Maybe he should be more concerned with Magnetic Pole shift and Cosmic Rays during a Maunder Minimum !! I’ve only just begun to look into this, so if anyone has an opinion I’d love to hear it !!
https://youtu.be/vJKTLuvGAU4
Just to be clear, what they consider a ” Super Flood “, I would think it would be maybe a new little Ice Age !!
I am more concerned that there may be something to the hypothesis that volcanic and tectonic activity will increase if we have a Maunder Minimum type shutdown of the Sun. And that we really will have a return to LIA conditions.
I for one am hoping it is wrong, but am very concerned that it may be a true causative correlation. Because if so, that will be a real disaster scenario, and not in a hundred years, either.
Massive crop failures, such as occurred during the Year Without a Summer, would be far worse in the 21st century than they were in the early 19th century, when people were generally far more self sufficient, and there were fewer people by an order of magnitude or so. People stored food back then, often enough on hand for many months. The world food supply today is far to short to compensate for widespread failure of grain harvests…one can visualize a scenario where a billion or more starve to death…and I doubt they will go quietly.
There were very good reasons why wars and pestilence were far more common during global cool periods.
Taken out of context – and people will do so – some of your phrases sound, … odd.
This for example: “shutdown of the Sun”
Other ideas expressed in your comment are debatable. The year without a summer (1816) seems to have not been a global event, and I wonder what that would mean if it were.
With the technology and infrastructure in place now, crop failures and resulting famine can be handled (unless, as in Syria, other issues get in the way). Many tons of hay were shipped (trucks & rail) into drought areas a few years ago (2011?) in the USA. In 1816 this could not have been done even if the need was known in advance and folks wanted to ship into the region.
And “world food supply today is far to short ”
In fact, grain is in such abundance it is frequently piled on the ground or left in fields for lack of storage facilities. Search ‘images’ for: ** corn ground pile **
Text material from March 31, 2015:
Corn Stocks Up 11 Percent from March 2014
Soybean Stocks Up 34 Percent
All Wheat Stocks Up 6 Percent
Source USDA
John, yes, “shutdown of the sun” is sloppy shorthand used to economize words…I am surprised you are not familiar with the reference. It refers to a halt of sunspot activity.
And I did not mean to imply that I am advocating these to be true…I hope that none of these things ever come to pass.
But do you think a midsummer hard freeze in the key growing regions or the US, Canada, and Eurasia could not cause a massive enough shortfall in harvests to endanger huge numbers of people?
And I think you are mischaracterizing the YWaS…it was a widespread phenomenon. It caused crop failures on a widespread basis throughout the Northern Hemisphere, with summer freezes lost crops from North America, to the British Isles, Europe, and even into Asia, where China was particularly hard hit.
Grain is abundant, and we rely on this abundance. During the YWaS, grain prices rose some five to tenfold.
There may be grain on the ground, but it is not enough to withstand loss of a years harvest. An extreme possibility, but there is not a multiyear supply of food for the world. In general, food is consumed about as fast as it is grown, and the overall supply at any given time is said to be about 3 to 6 months, taking the world as a whole.
As i said, this is not something I stay awake at night over. I am not a prepper, but many are. Looking back at history, it can be observed that we have been incredibly lucky as a society in terms of major disasters, and I am not speaking of localized droughts or floods or even country wide famines…but global scale events.
Cold kills plants and animals…not slowly, but all the way dead in one night if it gets cold enough.
Contrast that with predictions of doom over a 1.6 degree temp rise, which some people have said is unsurvivable and actually threatens humanity.
Little Ice Age conditions froze up rivers in places like New York and London from November to March, and hindered commerce on a wide scale.
Look what occurred last winter…when cold caused a virtual shutdown of economic activity in the Northeast US for months. And that was just a single cold winter.
Besides, I only said when asked for an opinion that I am concerned that there may be something to the idea that these events were related to solar activity. No one, especially not me, has any idea if it is true or not.
But if it is true, and if the sun is going into some sort of grand minimum, which it appears to be doing, there may be trouble. Or modern technology and agriculture may render similar events as occurred in the past as no big deal.
But I do not think technology can prevent crop failures if there is a freeze in the middle of summer in key growing regions. If it happened in the past, it could happen in the future. (or do you disagree?)
Big ifs.
We will know a lot more in 15 years, I think.
Grand minimum + extended La Nina. Might just make for interesting times in the US.
The Global Warming hoax has similar effects on people as dangerous religious cults.
Note to Piers Sellers.
Dear Piers,
I am truly sorry to learn of your illness. The following will be difficult for you to accept, but the evidence points strongly to the following conclusion: There is no global warming crisis.
Set you mind at ease and focus your last days on those you love.
God bless, Allan
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/06/13/presentation-of-evidence-suggesting-temperature-drives-atmospheric-co2-more-than-co2-drives-temperature/
Observations and Conclusions:
1. Temperature, among other factors, drives atmospheric CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature. The rate of change dCO2/dt is closely correlated with temperature and thus atmospheric CO2 LAGS temperature by ~9 months in the modern data record
2. CO2 also lags temperature by ~~800 years in the ice core record, on a longer time scale.
3. Atmospheric CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales.
4. CO2 is the feedstock for carbon-based life on Earth, and Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are clearly CO2-deficient. CO2 abatement and sequestration schemes are nonsense.
5. Based on the evidence, Earth’s climate is insensitive to increased atmospheric CO2 – there is no global warming crisis.
6. Recent global warming was natural and irregularly cyclical – the next climate phase following the ~20 year pause will probably be global cooling, starting by ~2020 or sooner.
7. Adaptation is clearly the best approach to deal with the moderate global warming and cooling experienced in recent centuries.
8. Cool and cold weather kills many more people than warm or hot weather, even in warm climates. There are about 100,000 Excess Winter Deaths every year in the USA and about 10,000 in Canada.
9. Green energy schemes have needlessly driven up energy costs, reduced electrical grid reliability and contributed to increased winter mortality, which especially targets the elderly and the poor.
10. Cheap, abundant, reliable energy is the lifeblood of modern society. When politicians fool with energy systems, real people suffer and die. That is the tragic legacy of false global warming alarmism.
Allan MacRae, Calgary, June 12, 2015
http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-scientists-dispute-climate-change-2012-4
I’m not somebody who thinks that one’s “carbon footprint” is meaningful at all,
but,
since he apparently does, I wonder what additional “footprint” is caused by attempts to cure or lessen his illness?
I believe that if I were on my deathbed and believed in CAGW, I would somehow apologize to my family survivors for the size of my carbon footprint. I expect many of us here would, again, IF we believed in CAGW.
Many CAGW supporters, like Al Gore, have carbon footprints many times that of an average person, yet they don’t apologize for their excess while they do proclaim that others must reduce their carbon footprint.
I guess there is no apologizing for hypocrisy.
He liked flying planes, etc. All the global warmists love long distance travel. None use sail boats and camels to do this, either, well, there may be one or two…
Fixed your little typo 😉
My bad.
Does that mean we’ve found Big Foot?
While his situation is certainly sad, his statement disproves itself. Equally sadly, last year was apparently not the “death of denial” , at least for him and his fellows.
Who doesn’t believe that climate is changing ?! Who does not think it was colder 300 years ago. When was it ever not changing ? That is to completely miss the point.
If that’s the sum of his critical scientific thinking I suggest he makes the best of the time left to him to do something more useful.
Disturbing perhaps that he would use his impending death for climate propaganda, but not at all surprising. In the game of propaganda, everything is fair, including telling children their parents are evil for using cars, that there’s a conspiracy of oil producers while calling skeptics conspiracy theory believers and threatening to kill or jail all those who disagree. This is the precise behaviour of a three-year-old who gets caught doing something bad so he starts crying and saying he’s hurt to avoid getting punished for lying and breaking rules. Again, proof that science has nothing to do with global warming. Note the man is appealing to the consensus of political leaders now.
I wonder how empathetic the reaction would be if his position was viewed from a more Malthusian view. These “save the world” appeals to the fragile earth always leave me with the odor of $100 cigar smoke from a back room filled with elites deciding who has the right to life by controlling the earth’s resources.
http://thetruthwins.com/archives/30-population-control-quotes-that-show-that-the-elite-truly-believe-that-humans-are-a-plague-upon-the-earth
Shouldn’t archeology show us that man’s footprint on the earth can be swept away in a few thousand years, while the earth’s calendar is measured in millions of years. To worry about curbing photosynthesis when faced with one’s mortality shows how powerful the psychology is behind AGW.
A puzzling paradox regarding the above quotes: Many of the countries and organizations who the quoted individuals represent are advocating policies and actions in direct contradiction to their above stated views.
If CAGW is such a threat to people, why are they trying to stop it?
If they want to reduce populations, why do they want to bring hordes of immigrants from places where people reproduce like bunny rabbits?
Why do they want to pay people to have more children, via social welfare programs that actively encourage the exact behaviors they decry?
They all have their head so far up their @ur momisugly$$e$, it is almost more worse than the shocking things they say in public (which raises the question…if this is what they are willing to declare publically, just what are they saying behind closed doors?).
Unfortunately, the answer is probably more grim and malevolent than we would like to admit. The war against fossil fuels for the elites is not driven by a belief in the dangers of CAGW. It is driven by a disdain for the freedoms inexpensive fuels afford.
If everyone is dependent on green subsidies, public transportation, justified rationing of resources and is convinced to vote for these shackles under the guise of compassion for the refugees, love for the planet, helping the poor; it allows the powerful to do great evils with the full support of those they enslave.
We see Soros buying up coal. Bill Gates funding vaccines and population control measures. The masses are the useful idiots to confirm the elites power only to be sacrificed later at their various altars.