Josh writes: it’s been a fun week.
First, there was a survey of 17 countries showing the British rank 15th in their concern over climate change. H/t GWPF
Then we had George Monbiot of the UK Guardian wrongly citing the IMF on an equally wrong definition of subsidies.
Finally, we had the post Paris realisation that since climate science is settled we don’t need any more climate scientists. Australia has jumped first with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) to axe 300 of to 350 jobs.
You should all be very concerned about Global Warming! It’s been common knowledge for some time now that Global Warming causes an increase in rich older men taking younger brides, elopement, high school dropouts and sexually transmitted diseases. Now breaking news from the U.K. where animal behaviouralists have announced that Global Warming causes dogs to become depressed! Wait until they find out!
My dog is depressed by global warming too. When the snow melts, he knows I’m going to make him go outside and work in the yard with me, and he likes air conditioning better. 🙂
Too funny!
Yes, oil gets “shedloads of tax,” but—except for lubrication of the monstrous gearbox and bearings—it has little to do with wind turbines.
RE Sceptics and Non
Our Non ABC (National broadcaster) spends enormous amounts of time in each weather forecast telling everyone how hot it is going to be when really the temperature is around 30 – 32C = 80+F. But when most of the listeners work in aircon they believe the nonsense when they emerge in the afternoons to normal warmth. Most really have no idea of the ambient temperature of a summer day, cannot read a thermometer etc
To me anything above 100F or above is hot; depending on the humidity, but can be quite bearable at 42C+ with low humidity.
In Aus, totally agree! It’s the humidity, water, in the air!
Stop it you two. They’d ditched the positive water vapor feedback hypothesis in favor of the heat hiding in the oceans hypothesis. Don’t encourage them.
The Mann cartoon and its idea that fronting a mantra that the “science is settled” would ultimately leave the one who thus spake it out of work, would have been funny even outside the context of post-Paris ‘layoffs’. But the layoffs add a extra dash of irony to it. Great timing.
It can take me days to go through the funnies because before I laugh at anything, even a cartoon, I must do a bit of research to discover whether it is grounded on direct context such as an actual quote, or a more tenuous attributed sentiment as famously expressed as “here I just said something… they would say something like that” even if they wouldn’t or didn’t. Direct quotes twisted by fate make good laughs. Attributed sentiment might only bring a smile, even a bit of sympathy for the accused.
We know that Al Gore said flat out that the science is settled, he made that pat phrase part of his drilling droning lectures. But did Michael Mann say it? His pet Wikipedia page makes a point of quoting him down in the references that the science is not settled in the specific case of polar bearmageddon and hurricanemageddon, which does imply it could be settled everywhere else, and these two things just need a little brush-up. Hardly what we’re looking for.
Then in my science-is-settled quote quest I stumble on this interesting philosophical rant that examines the very motive behind saying it, and how it is an accursed mind-trap of sorts no matter which side of the electric fence you are pissing on.
It leads me to daydream-imagine an Experiment where scientists are rolled into a giant MRI machine and as they lay there someone proclaims, “The science is settled.” To see what part of their brains lights up. What amazing insights could be revealed, thus?
Then down in the comments — lo and behold! — someone promises to show me exactly where and when Michael Mann declared that the science is settled. “That’ll teach that Wikipedia page” I thought. So I came, I saw, I clicked:
Bill Maher: Just for the record, Doc, it is settled science, right?
Michael Mann: Well you don’t have to ask me. You can ask the National Academy of Sciences, you can ask …[society name dropping continues without answering question]… I could go on but they’re all on record…
Bill Maher [interrupting]: But they’re not here.. You’re here. So I’m asking you… it is super super settled science, right?
[Bill Maher’s interruption represents a brief glimmer of ye olde journalism]
Michael Mann: Yeah. I mean absolutely. [Begins name dropping again…]
Arrrrrgh! Once again existential Lucy has set out the existential football and I’m lying flat on my back. It is I who am accursed to go looking for this direct quote, only to find it being force fed to him… by Bill Maher. So while there is no doubt that a part of Mann’s brain is set alight by the phrase, he was not observed then to utter it. I come away empty handed so far.
So I’m asking you, is that Cartoon By Josh super super funny?
Um…. Yeah. I mean absolutely.
The National Academy of Sciences … the same one who says that “radioactivity increase cancer risk, at any dose”, is settled science?
I love how every cartoon representation of a climate scientist is real chubby and has that cheesy goatee and moustache combo. LOL.
It’s amazing how many of them are chubby and have that cheesy goatee and moustache combo in real life! Josh creates incredibly realistic representations of each one.
😎
Perhaps another version of “Post Paris Prognosis” could have “The Mann” wearing blinders and the stick white with a red tip, like a blind-man’s cane?