Never mind the threat of nuclear war, asteroid and comet impacts, a super volcanic eruption, robot overlords, or a global pandemic…no these aren’t all that threatening according to Professor Raymond Pierrehumbert of Oxford, one of the founders of “Real Climate”. No, it’s “climate change”.
Climate Challenge is “Humanity’s Final Exam”
From the description of the interview:
After a couple of decades of studying climate change and teaching at the University of Chicago, Raymond Pierrehumbert has been named the new Halley Professor of Physics at Oxford University. On a recent visit to The New York Times, he capped a fascinating interview with this sobering thought.
It is instructive to view the list of 12 biggest threats to humanity from this story at the Washington Post
They give just a 0.01 percent chance of extreme climate change happening in next 200 years. they rank Artificial Intelligence, Unknown consequences, and Synthetic Biology higher.
I’d say humanity has a lot of “final exams”, and climate change is the least of our worries.
And who can forget this story about Raymond Pierrehumbert?
The wit and wisdom of ‘Real’ Climate scientist Dr. Ray Pierrehumbert
![RayPierhumbert[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/raypierhumbert1.jpg?resize=480%2C607)
Or how about this one, where he calls coal “Satan’s Rock”
But it’s the climate skeptics who are labeled the crazy people, not esteemed paragons of “sensibility” like Dr. Pierrehumbert.
At least if there is a sudden demise of AGW science the esteemed Oxford proff, Dr. P might earn decent living by basking at the Oxford Circus tube station (btw not in Oxford)
basking ?????
You mean BUSKING, I think !!
with his qualifications he could do both simultaneously, basking in the sun, while busking for living, after all any day now London is going to be as hot as Barcelona.
Vuk: after all any day now London is going to be as hot as Barcelona.
For climate science extrapolation purposes it already is. They are less than 1200km apart, so if we had no measurements for London it would be perfectly acceptable to use the temperature data from Barcelona.
The idea of Climate Challenge is “Marxism Final Exam”” ?
There was nuttin’ in that comment that merited cloaking.
“merited cloaking” , (as usual) I don’t get it.
That is because what I said was “bleeped” into oblivion.
“merited cloaking” – I don´t get it either.
And also I don´t get:
“That is because what I said was “bleeped” into oblivion.”
I have no idea what he tries to say.
A cloaking device renders something invisible.
‘Merited’ means earned. So, ‘merited cloaking’ means that something was deservedly made invisible.
English is awesome.
I was OK with the meaning of the terms used, but Mr. Westhaver’s comment followed immediately after mine (see times) so I got impression that it was directed at what I said.
My sincere apology to all concerned.
Probably something to do with cloaca.
Paul, Nothing in spam filter or moderation. No active “bleeps” that I’m aware of here.
Thank-you Anthony. In that case, the most likely explanation is a mistake on my part…and I make many.
I suspect WP manages to lose a few comments for no apparent reason. Hey, it’s better the FaceBook.
Several times I have tried to make a comment, but the machine tells me I can’t. I don’t know if it’s a glitch, or I’ve hit a bad word filter, or what.
Paul, your server might be buffering outgoing comments. Mine does this all the time as of late. I use a local line-of-site wifi company that has limited capacity. Lately I have been getting buffered a bunch! It shows up here on this blog by having sent comments somewhere in limbo by my server, not by the host here. It can take minutes to over an hour before it shows up. I sometimes have to ask myself if the buffering is because of a low-end service company or if the buffering is due to some kind of imposed monitoring of less than politically correct blog traffic. After all, the Guv’mnt has targeted other politically opposing entities for scrutiny. And since they can’t selectively monitor my traffic, maybe they buffer the whole thing? Even my incoming downloads, including advertisements, news videos, etc, are buffered as well.
On the other hand, the buffering could just be related to dramatically increased internet use by everybody.
Yes, I’ve noticed a delay in access to the email account I use. I now clean out my cache after every visit to WUWT. Hmmmm.
“Raymond Pierrehumbert has been named the new Halley Professor of Physics at Oxford University.”
Looks like Oxford is not much of a university. (as most these days are not)
University is OK, my daughter got science master degree there few years back. Occasionally I contributed a modest donation, imagine my dismay when one of students pointed to her the IPPC Assessment Report with inscription ‘this book was bought by donation from Mr. & Mrs Vukcevic’.
Life is oddly full of those little moments.
IPPC AR -5 is surely worthy of careful study, a classic case history the subordination of science to political ideology. More subtle than Lysenko and much more consequential.
Raymond Pierrehumbug will say whatever he’s told to say (unless he’s caught the AGW “religion”) – it ensures that he gets his funding. If he told the truth, he’d be out on his ear before you could say “warmist”!
Halley Professor? As in Halley’s Comet? Maybe he’ll disappear for 86 years
The biggest threat to humanity is WILLFUL STUPIDITY.
.. The greatest threat to Humanity is liberalism !
The biggest CLIMATE threat to humanity will be when the next Ice Age returns, not some popular, highly funded meme flag-poled by some crazy prof from the U. of Chicago.
..Didn’t we use to put these people in asylums at one time ? For their own safety, of course ! D’oh !
I think I know that tune.
“They are coming to take me away.
Ha Ha Hee Hee”
On a more serious note, this fellow specializes in planetary conjecture of which there can as yet be no proof. Ice ball/ Non Ice ball earth. Planetary climate of Mars for the first billion years. Etc. He is simply doing it again. I had his sort in college. Common in certain levels of university science departments. They publish every stray thought as if it is earth shattering and become addicted.
Pat
Napoleon XIV
the price of cheese . . . . . .
I’m sure it would be on You-Tube.
Auto
here…
from 5 years ago, right here at WUWT:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/19/on-the-anniversary-of-climategate-realclimates-ray-pierrehumbert-sings-the-blues-chicago-style/
It hurts to watch.
..I find it terrifying that these people are allowed to walk the streets among our children !
I find it terrifying that these people are allowed to teach.
Don’t make eye contact, keep walking. If he grabs your arm, point across the street and yell, “Look Mikey Manniacal”.
It used to be a hat or a bag on the floor for tips. It’s the first time I’ve seen a glass of wine used for tips. Must be the Oxford touch.
very very clever…wine glass for tips
Don’t you worry. He has the hair qualifications to teach Marxism.
I was wondering how old he is, but he has covered his tracks well. He’s over 60, right?
There is something deeply insidious about students incurring $500,000 in debt to be proselytized by these shamans posing as scientists.
You want to solve the student debt crises, give these LSD infused nut jobs an express pass out the front door. How does this guy get to be head of the head, let alone a physics department!?!
The science section of university libraries, should be relabeled “Fiction”
Well. Have you tried to understand quantum physics? Gotta be a little touched. Especially when the equation collapses.
Ouch! Paul you could have gone all day for a year not posting that abomination (abortion?) of a music video. His participation in that fiasco should have disqualified him for any university post anywhere.
As far as I can imagine there have been many final exams produced by climate change. We are the product of the ones that passed them.
Remembering back to a physical anthropology class I took in the previous century, encephalization of humans was accelerated by the ice ages, according to some anthropologists whose names I do not remember.
I don’t doubt the good Professor’s lectures would be entertaining. 😉
Stand up comedy takes timing.
Professor Raymond Pierrehumbert has been named the new Halley Professor of Physics at Oxford University and has also taken on the role of Nutty Professor Emeritus of England.
From the wonderful Pibgorn comic strip by Brooke McEldowney, June 20, 2011 syndicated by gocomix.com. If you decide to continue reading the strip, start at the beginning.
http://assets.amuniversal.com/4824d7807d13012ee3c400163e41dd5b
http://assets.amuniversal.com/e9aa1ba07dcd012ee3c400163e41dd5b
The candidate list must have been of appalling quality
The referenced Washington Post article is proof, if any is needed, that the formerly reputable publication has slipped moorings from reality. Waaaaay down at the bottom they put:
The translation of this is: “once we get a global government, it might not do the right things”. Nowhere does WaPo consider the risk of many current national governments (pre-eminent among being the US) (a) destroying the ability/capacity of their populations to build wealth and (b) spending themselves into abject poverty. The odds: damn near certain the way things are going.
If the EU is an indication, super-national governments are worse in this respect most national ones. Consider the examples of N. Korea, Zimbabwe, Cuba and Venezuela scaled up to global proportions — need a stiff drink yet?
And Pierrehumbert is scared of a little more CO2?
… + 10,000
“Current technology can make it easier to create a totalitarian state.”
The greatest risk at present for totalitarian governance might very well be United Nations. United Nations is responsible for creating the climate hysteria which has even resulted in senators and activist calling RICO investigations upon opponents.
“It can’t happen here” is always wrong: a dictatorship can happen anywhere.”
― Karl Popper, Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography
“The Utopian attempt to realize an ideal state, using a blueprint of society as a whole, is one which demands a strong centralized rule of a few, and which is therefore likely to lead to a dictatorship.”
― Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Volume 1 : The Spell of Plato
Or as the Daleks say to Dr. Who all the time: ‘Exterminate’.
Now just define nation so that US is a nation (ask any Mexican), and Europe is not. And then point out how EU administration is worse than say Obama administration. We have a vote. If we vote social democrats and green politicians, or even communists to the EU parliament, then really it is our own fault.
I don’t like EU, but if you think what was before it, iron curtain in the middle of Europe, in the middle of Germany to say exactly, Russia strangling half of it, then maybe, just maybe it IS better to have strong EU and as weak as possible Russia. You know, EU is not even very strong yet.
Think not about Cuba scaled to global proportions, think about Putin scaled to a world leader proportions. Shudder.
I really place polical catastrophes much above anthropogenic global warming. War included in those.
Yikes. And this is one of the “smartest” on his side of the argument.
[snip – policy violations 1. It is a comment you posted elsewhere, not a comment made here 2. It’s chock full of Doug Cotton type stuff -mod]
How extraordinary. Pierrehumbert resembles a wino who used to tramp the streets of Oxford in the late 60s/early 70s. Nicknamed “brother” because that is how he addressed everyone he spoke to. I don’t think they are the same person. “Brother” used to speak more sense even on his “red” (bad) days than this guy.
“After a couple of decades of studying climate change and teaching at the University of Chicago, Raymond Pierrehumbert…”
—————–
Ah yes, the University of Chicago, that enlightened institution which gave tenure, Distinguished Professorship and retirement to William Ayers, former Weather Underground co- founder and violent, radical, revolutionary Communist bomber of buildings, given a free pass for his actions by “the law”. Ayers is/was an education curriculum theorist who is no doubt responsible for much of what passes as today’s public school curriculum, which is no doubt responsible for much of today’s societal… well, you get the picture.
Ayers is also responsible for introducing Barack Obama to Chicago politics and advising him throughout his political career. Again, you probably get the picture. Ayers was most recently photographed at the recent Chicago riots in and around Donald Trump’s rally. Trump, you see, doesn’t carry the seal of approval of the world’s ruling elite.
Pierrehumbert’s musings and promotion to Oxford are just another little piece of the puzzle.
Mere coincidence no doubt.
One of the skills of this administration is the institutionalization of their programs by appointing the right people to key leadership positions deep within organizations.
The good professor appears to fit the bill and what better place than the lofty Oxford.
Ayers was at the University of Illinois Chicago, not the same place at all. He does live close to U of C though, in fact he and Obama were neighbors.
I stand corrected. I’ve misunderstood his school affiliation for years.
The stupid, it burns.
In a very real sense the professor is correct. There is now of huge amounts of science piling up which shows that CAGW is not the disaster once thought. In spite of this, an international juggernaut continues strengthening, which advocates policies which will be catastrophic to all of western civilization if put in force.
One can sense a choice coming up, a fork in the road for the western world. Will we stay true to the foundations of western civilization such as logic and reason from the Age of Enlightenment, science from the Renaissance, technology from the Industrial Revolution? Or will we succumb to the primitive fears and superstitions of the mindless savage? Will we be ruled by our fears, and institute policies which will so degrade our societies, that we will be helpless in the face of barbarian hoards and all will be lost.
Can we still use logic and reason, and science and knowledge to understand that there are forces that are trying to frighten us. Can we resist succumbing to our fears, or not? This is the fork in the road.
Here is Dr. Sallie Baliunas on Weather Cooking:
Is this our past, or our future?
Beat me to it. The professor is right of course, just not in the way he thinks. Every university that has gone all-in on CAGW has failed The Enlightenment and stupified the Age of Reason. They call themselves “post-modern”, but in order to transcend Modernity they need to have reached it first. After decades of witch hunting for deniers, I wonder if the Enlightenment wasn’t a pinnacle of some sort, which we are now descending back down from on the other side.
Fascinating perspective. She does a fine job painting the reality of how one goes from bad weather … to panic … to superstition … to the villified. She also describes how the defenders of logic and reason were threatened as deniers. While I can understand the DESIRE to want to be protected as a scientist, I think it is folly to expect that the protection comes from the very society that is embroiled in the tug of war. Scientists would do well to secure their own protection that is not beholden to the society they do battle in.
TonyL – it is our present. The consequences are happening now. Just got my renewal for my property insurance and even with dropping coverage for “tree and shrub debris removal … for damage caused by windstorms” to avoid “possible premium increase.” the premium has gone up about 15%!?!
It then goes on to say “With climate change, windstorms have become more frequent in recent years.” A bald-faced lie since the accumulated cyclonic energy (A.C.E.) index shows no such trend, no increase in number or intensity of wind storms.
So even though this whole thing is a huge marketing exercise in mass deception – the effects are starting. They are going with the assumption that it doesn’t matter if it’s actually true, just that it is accepted. Of course I read here years ago where insurance companies were some of the first on the bandwagon since they could see the financial benefits.
Useful idiots like Pierrehumbert will continue to thrive since they add to the chorus, and we pay with real dollars for a fiction. A lot of professors tend to be some of the most disconnected from reality-types you’ll encounter and can’t get enough of rotting out the foundations from the inside.
Pierrehumbert makes outrageous comments which are completely removed from observations and analysis to demonstrate that he is a member of the cult of CAWG. It is politically correct, politically necessary to support and push CAGW.
I am curious as to when and how quickly that paradigm will end in response to global cooling.
The past cyclic warming periods ended abruptly based on Greenland ice sheet temperatures.
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2016/anomnight.3.17.2016.gif
http://academic.evergreen.edu/z/zita/teaching/CClittell/readings/Jan31_Overpeck_and_Cole_2006.pdf
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~peter/Resources/Holocene.vs.Stage5e.html
When Professor Pierrehumbert insists that we all bow down to Carbon Dioxide and offer up human sacrifices of cold, starving masses in an attempt to appease such a vengeful and omnipotent God that he believes is capable of doing anything and everything, he’s already failed his final exam.
and offer up human sacrifices of cold, starving masses
He didn’t do that.
Take cheap energy away and there will be starving masses. We can of course pretend to do something but the reductions AGW proponents want to atmospheric CO2 would cause huge destruction; and not only that; reducing CO2 would directly cause declining agricultural production causing a wave of hunger deaths.
Telling CO2 emissions need to disappear, or atmospheric CO2 needs to decline from the current concentration is equal to telling we need to sacrifice people.
I really trust there will be a better option than acting prematurely now to regret later.
Take cheap energy away and there will be starving masses.
1) That’s not obvious to me. What number of people will starve for each increase in the cost of energy?
2) There’s lots of energy in the same ball-park cost as fossil fuels. Personal PV beats grid parity in most places. Wind beats grid parity in most places at the moment. Nuclear is in the ballpark and kills a lot fewer people than coal. These don’t release CO2.
AGW proponents want to atmospheric CO2 would cause huge destruction; and not only that; reducing CO2 would directly cause declining agricultural production causing a wave of hunger deaths.
1) An important impact of global warming is the drop in agricultural production. So releasing CO2 also causes that.
2) Farm machinery would work fine as battery electric, in many circumstances because they don’t have a huge commute.
I really trust there will be a better option than acting prematurely now to regret later.
The best option seems to have been act about 20 years ago. But while we are now looking at funding some kind of sequestration as well as suffering the economic consequences of more rapid decarbonisation of the economy. We are already regretting not acting earlier.
Why do they always look like that?
Yeah, I concur, when any person, academic or not, looks like a “bag of crap” I tend to discount anything they have to say.
FYI, my father had a PhD, I have a PhD, we never looked like we just stepped out of that really big dryer at the local wash-n-dry.
Tom and Mark,
My sentiments exactly. I didn’t even listen to the audio. I can tell by looking at the picture that he has been drinking at the tenured water cooler way too long and has no idea what the real world beyond his little campus is actually like.
I’m surprised he hasn’t dyed his skin an icky green colour
When I worked at a large research organisation we had a theory that these people were model failures that were kept in a cupboard for times when research staff were difficult to find.
They were never considered useful. just there to make up the numbers.
Tom in Florida……….Why do they always look like that?
Asked at the end of his days what he had learned from his long and influential life, he is alleged to have replied: ” Two things, money counts and people who look stupid usually are stupid!”
Good enough?
Cheers
That was George Bernard Shaw by the way.
we’ve heard this kind of language before during the heydays of the anthropogenic ozone depletion final exam
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2748016
We have Lewendowsky, Jones and now Pierrehumbert.
If you send us Turney, I think England just might explode
I’m sure in the minds of some they snicker and see it as a gift for your colonialism.
For diversity and inclusivity purposes you can have Suzuki too!
It’s a great revelation to know that the “Goodness” of humanity is our salvation.
I’m reminded of the Mae West’s reply when an admirer exclaimed “Oh, my Goodness!” Upon seeing Mae’s new mink coat.
“Dearie, Goodness had nothing to do with it.”
Isn’t it time to do the official “climate scientist decimation” ?
If ‘Climate Challenge’ is the final exam, then ’20th Century Fiction’ is the curriculum.
BAM!
Perhaps Pierrehumbert should simply have studied climate…
This is a man that has never been off the public teet.
Worse yet, he’s protected and put on a pedestal.
Just like a stopped clock, he too can be right once a day.
24 hr clock OK.
Humanity’s Final Exam.
For sure, if we do not shake off this wave of mass hysteria, we may be done for.
Collapsing civilization,tribalism and civil war
A society of takers where no maker survives.….
The parasites have swollen to the point where they believe they run the world.
The truly useless and clueless infest every office of our civic institutions.
Delusions of adequacy proliferate.
So Pierrehumert is correct, unless we cure the blind worms gnawing upon the foundations of our society, we will fall.
CAGW is indeed an omen of doom, the freeloading segment of our society, have institutionalized their theft into generational robbery.
Having gotten away with this systemic looting for so long, they now believe their activities are necessary for society to function.
You and I need wall to wall regulation, pointless oversight,random destruction and robbery to live our lives.
Must be true cause that is all the likes of this parasite ever offer.
CAGW had its final exam and it failed miserably.
It got ALL the answers wrong on: warming trends, severe weather trends, sea level rise, ocean “acidification”, falling crop yields, pandemics, precipitation projections, Antarctice land ice loss, etc.,…
It’s time for CAGW to go to O’Mally’s Bar, get sloppy drunk, puke its guts out, pass out in the gutter, and after sobering up, call uncle Bob to see if he needs another waiter at his restaurant…..
He’s talking about a modelled planet based on unobserved but assumed factors resulting a modelled climate.
Like all alarmists he suffers from Panglossian pessimism believing the current global average temperature is (almost) the best of all possible temperatures, the current climate
(almost) the best of all possible climates — the best of all possible worlds, although things have deteriorated since around mid ‘70s when the global CO2 concentration was ~ 340 ppm.
And the global dire poverty rate was five times higher:
http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/worldpoverty1.jpg
The greatest threat to humanity is Global Ingratitude. No amount of bad hair or worse beard can disguise Pierre’s utter dependence on the fossil fuels and heavy development he disdains. Just another superficial bourgeois bohemian who will rush back to the grid and grab at the countless amenities provided by heavy industry as soon as Earth Hour is up. (In fact, he’ll likely chew up more fossil fuel during Earth Hour…but that’s show biz.)
Does he not have Internet access, or did he just forget that the problem was solved at the Paris conference?
Phil, I think the pigeon carrying the message for him got shredded in a wind turbine on the way home from Paris. He’ll find out eventually as word-of-mouth from Paris spreads his way.
Dr. Pierrehumbert “Look Ma NO Brains”.
This Liberal Socialist cancer that afflicts all the world had it’s origin at Oxford in the writings of Thomas More and his “wonderful” book “Utopia” The bible of the Elite that is driven to Rule us all…pg
Don’t forget those pervert commie spies that ran away to Moscow that came from Oxford.
I guess the Moscow of today is Washington D.C.
They were mostly, if not all, from Cambridge – hence “the Cambridge Spy Ring”
Now! Now! They were Cambridge spies, all 5 of them
There is nothing literally liberal in socialism. Socialists want to take your freedom away. A true liberal believes in liberty. Socialist wants to tax you and then decide for you, what to do with the money. A true liberal lets you do decide as long as it does not harm anybody.
The difference between a conservative and a socialist is that the socialist takes your money and then tells you do things, where the conservative just tells you to do things even you haven’t any money to do it.
I believe in setting liberty as a value, and that is the best thing to learn from the United States. It is not the same as being a conservative.
Maybe I need to duck now?
Liberal Socialist and Liberal Progressive are buzz words for International Socialist or Communist.
Today Classical Liberals are considered Conservatives.
It appears to me that Trump represents a more National Socialist point of view. In the old days that was Fascist or Nazi, but we don’t say those things today.
I am a conservative democrat and want the government to be small and follow the Constitutional contract that was devised and agreed to by my Classical Liberal thinking Ancestors…pg
“True” certainly doesn’t define “liberal” in current US politics, then. Maybe libertarian. Liberals want freedom only for their agenda. They promote indoctrination and defy freedom for those whose views they disagree with.
Alarmists Lives Matter
I don’t get it ???
How come all these intellects, who consider themselves knowing more than everyone else, look as though they have just crawled out of a hollow log ??
North Korea has just launched a missile that can carry a nuclear warhead (They claim they have a nuclear device. If true it can be delivered with this missile which has a range of ~1000kms). More ISIS gun fights in Belgium (Heh! Saw that coming in the 80’s). And this guy thinks climate change is a real problem. Well, its now autumn in Australia and it’s quite a bit cooler now than it was in February. Oh, but THAT is just WEATHER eh? But the 36 days above 26c in to the 2nd week of March is proof of AGW, if you believe alarmists of course! Did they forget what happens when after an El Nino peak?
Clearly he has had too much of that red stuff in the glass on the left. Stay off the turps, get a haircut, a shave and a job…and learn to play something that is not a gas bag!
Now, now, if he plays a button box rather than a piano key one ha can’t be ALL bad.
he not ha. Stupid computer still can’t spell.
Anything that needs to be squeezed to allow wind to pass through it that makes no better “sound” than a whoopie cushion should be left alone!
It has been long known Oxford city hates cars (As demonstrated by TopGear). Loves hairy people who ride bikes and eat bio-fuel raw materials (Veg). I guess this guy has and will lead a very comfortable life, and I am sure he has a car, lives in an old listed cottage, with gas fired central heating no doubt (Yes it DOES get cold in the UK). And, he’s been doing this for “decades” apparently. Nice little earner (Sc@m) there!
Is there anything so stupid that people with bad hair or a PhD are not willing to speak it? Seems not.
The biggest threat to our planet is our sun, it always has been. it happens in ways such as when plants don’t receive enough UV, bees and other insects react to this, they hibernate, the biosphere becomes unhealthy, disease and as a consequence famine becomes widespread.
Another way is plague! such as the one that occurred during a very warm period in Earths recent history that allowed parasites (fleas) to thrive and spread across Europe infecting and wiping out much of the human population.
In case no one from the dummy camp of “climate” meme knows how much of a role our star actually has, it produces vitamins, UV radiation affects all life living on the surface, it causes deficiencies when it is low and surplus when it is high.
Thanks to engineering and science we have the ability bypass these natural cycles, but this takes us to have affordable energy, the rest of nature can not chose another source of energy, our biosphere is locked into cycles.
I’d love to hear from these “Cycle-mania” freaks who for some reason don’t accept that natural cycles exist and point their uneducated finger at those of us who spend a lot of time trying to understand and explain them.
Oh those tenured neo climate change professors,
never subject to Hammurarbi rules, never having
to sleep under their own bridges.
They give just a 0.01 percent chance of extreme climate change happening in next 200 years.
Well, no.
That’s the chance of it causing “Famines, mass deaths, social collapse and mass migration ignite global conflict. Civilization crumbles.”
That sounds like every day in most African nations. And the world turns a blind-eye…unless one of those despots blames something on climate change, in which case the world lines-up to line his pockets.
Why don’t you take up that cause instead of the 0.01 percent possible future one?
Who is the examiner?
If the ‘climate challenge’ is to be humanities final exam exam it is logical to assume we are going to fail, otherwise it wouldn’t be our final exam.
Humanities current exam which is very real and much scarier than AGW, is antibiotic resistance and it is happening now. Interestingly it isn’t on the list from The Washington Post. So ok I agree it isn’t going to be global killer like an asteroid impact, but a truly post antibiotic world won’t be the same world we live in now and there will be fewer people living in it.
I promise I haven’t watched the clip but I bet the professor cannot pronounce his ‘r’s.
Learned folk from Oxford and Cambridge have great difficulty with this and appear to wear it as a badge of pride.
I was wrong but the guy is American. We’ll call it a draw.
The guy is a complete caricature of a bearded weirdy, lefty CND supporting anti-capitalist dork.
These people are well intended, although often sanctimonious. But that goes both ways. They have, essentially, been led astray. They listened to the wrong people, i.e., the ones that argued against dispassionately considering all sides.
Entire classes of professions are swayed in this manner. This is inevitable. It is human nature. It is the human condition. We get a lot of net gain out of it (though not always in flavors to everyone’s liking). Other times, not so much. But the intellectual class is indispensable, the problem being that they have forgotten that the rest of us are indispensable, too. Intellectually indispensable. It’s the difference between peer and independent review.
No lying thief is well intended. Another guy said no crook is willingly externally policed.
When someone sides with people who confess misleading the entire global scientific community by making up fraudulent data
he sided with the criminal thieves of the world. No matter how ”well intentioned” that lying criminal thievery.
There is no evidence he thinks the data is wrong. Siding with someone who is wrong does not make one dishonest.
For that matter, from what I can tell, having made the rounds extensively, the people he is relying on do not believe they are wrong. They believe we are wrong.
What you are saying about them is exactly what they are saying about us. Both sides think they are right. Misplaced accusations of dishonesty abound. Never ascribe to dishonesty that which can be attributed to confirmation bias. And we all have that. All of us. You, me, everyone.
“Never ascribe to dishonesty that which can be attributed to confirmation bias. And we all have that. All of us. You, me, everyone.”
Indeed, we all benefit from the help of an objective observer.
All we need to know about Raymondo is there in the pictures we have of him, the size of him and the glass of wine.
His size tells us he likes his food and what lays down fat on any mammalian animal is the consumption of carbohydrate. It enters the bloodstream as glucose, initially triggering the release of Dopamaine (makes you happy and feel-good) Glucose MUST be got rid of, that’s what insulin is for.
But it is a depressant in the pure sense of the word, it slows mental and physical activity – hence we all feel sleepy (typically 2 hours) after a ‘large’ meal.
And the alcohol goes without saying.
After years and years of eating carbs washed down with grog, one becomes tolerant to a point, in that you don’t notice how stupefied you actually are – you are chronically depressed.
This leads right on to feelings of guilt, endless worry and destroys your attention-span. This is obviously important for learning new things, about climate change for example.
Where depressants are normally encountered (via alcohol and dope) people imagine it enhances their self-confidence.
NOTHING is further from the truth. Climate models and warming theory are up there also but not in the same league of wrongness.
Self confidence is needed to question the consensus, to dare to be different and also to have the quick wittedness to respond quickly & logically to challenges. If quick wittedness cannot deliver, what do drunks do if not call on their mates and then start throwing insults and their fists around. 97%, consensus and Ad-homs – anyone?
Also it gives the ability to admit you may have been wrong on some or other point(s) – The Science is Settled- anyone?
Does any of that sound familiar in The Climate Debate?
I was born and raised in Oxford. When American tourists first started asking me, “Which way to the University?” I might ask “Which college” or try to explain that it was all around them. After a while I simply directed them to the Bodleian.
I don’t actually believe that this bloke exists.
I think Pierrehumbert is what they call a ‘black flag’ operation.
In a reality contest between conspiracy and silly, silly wins 97 times out of a hundred. Or maybe 99.9 out of a hundred.
This is not conspiracy. This is class action behavior. Inevitable, ubiquitous.
Of course there have been a few silly conspiracies. (The plot to assassinate Castro’s beard springs to mind.)
I for one remember Dr. Pierrehumbert’s reaction to the original “Climategate” leak. Give the man credit for a sense of humor, at least!
Climate Craziness is humanity’s “final exam”. How whacko are we as a species, to punish an entirely beneficial, life-giving gas at our own expense, thus lowering living standards and dooming many millions? Clearly, Ray-Ray Pierrehumpty-dumpty has already flunked.
A final exam might include the question, how does higher levels of CO2 cause colder winters?
Obama needs the correct answer:
“On January 8, 2014, the White House posted a controversial video claiming that global warming causes more severe winter cold.”
http://lidblog.com/judge-orders-white-house-to-stop-hiding-its-bogus-global-warming-proof/#
linked from:
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/
Only a lifelong academic would use the analogy “final exam”. I had to think for a moment what he was trying to say. In my limited experience, being a lifelong academic means having a very good chance of being out of touch with the real world. That was certainly one of the things that made me glad to get away from the ivory-tower world to try and scratch a living doing stuff.
In 1816 there were 2 universities in England and Wales (although there were 4 in Scotland)
In 1916 there were 12 universities in England and Wales
In 2016 there are 105 universities in England and Wales
Can they all be putting out valuable, leading-edge research? Somehow, I doubt it.
Quick note: I sent a comment with 4 links so I believe it is in moderation.
One of the links was to this article (Steven Barker et. al, 2011) which I quote from:
“Our formulation of the thermal bipolar see-saw concept is qualitatively analogous to that of (9) in that it implies the existence of a heat reservoir that convolves the northern signal, producing a southern signal with a longer characteristic time scale. Our approach is slightly different in that we relate the rate of Antarctic temperature change directly to the northern temperature anomaly. Indeed, we note that for some long stadial events, particularly those associated with glacial terminations, Antarctic temperatures appear to rise unabated until an abrupt warming event occurs in the north (19). On the other hand, our formulation does not imply that Antarctic temperatures must continue to rise indefinitely when-ever Greenland is cold, only while it is cold with respect to background conditions (defined by the orbital time scale component). We also note that northern temperature (regardless of background conditions) is not always constant throughout stadial events. For example, Greenland warmed significantly during cold stadial 21 (Fig. 2D). By our formulation, the rate of Antarctic temperature rise during this event would decrease correspondingly, in line with observations (Fig. 2A) (20).”
I speculate that their unknown “heat reservoir that convolves the northern signal” may be the “blob” as it grows ever bigger with left over El Nino waters that travel there on the gyre current and instead of continual circulation, splits off into an often reappearing or even stable warm pool off the North American coast, setting up a blocked jet stream loop that leads to extensive southward glaciation, invading North America to the 45th parallel and even beyond. Will the blob get any bigger than we have witnessed so far? Haven’t a clue other than to say, based on 800,000 year reconstructions, we are nearer the slide down to frozen drought than we are to rising out of one.
Pierrehumbert- a Professor? At Oxford?.
They must have gone stark, raving bonkers- just like their new bearded employee.
From global warming to climate change to extreme weather and now climate challenge?
Hmmm…a climate challenge might work-
Beats dropping polar bears off skyscrapers and blowing up schoolkiddies I suppose.
My comment with 4 links must still be in moderation or is being buffered by my server due to bandwidth limitations.
Anthony, is my comment with 4 links still in moderation bin? Or is it even there?
Looks like a normal intelligent human being….? Not!
The “Satan’s Rock” bit comes from Andrew Revkin’s song — Liberated Carbon.
Pierre plays accordion on Revkin’s album: A Very Fine Line. I own a copy.
Revkin has a terrific voice.
Final exams are a dime a dozen. The only final final exam is Darwin’s adapt and survive.
Raymond doesn’t seem to get out much. He should read his fellow physicist Luboš Motl more often, today for example he has a nice article about the history of science. Including this quote:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2016/03/weinberg-is-right-historians-are-wrong.html
Certain scientists are failing their own “final exams” right now.
Sad that Oxford has not gone to the dogs it has been handed over to to ignorant or dishonest pigs. Will this fake pseudo academic allow climate change science to be evaluated on performance of prediction by a panel of engineers in the light of the end of the hundred months to doomsday prediction? Of course no. No crook chooses to be externally policed.
I suppose like the no snow the hundred months predictions will be quietly removed from the public domain and we will never get the apology we are owed from low life self opinionated aristocrats like prince Charles who abuse their privileged positions to insult their betters who correctly said the climate scientists were at best over selling a case and at worst knowingly defrauding us.
People like him are devaluing the efforts of other Oxford graduates who worked hard to get qualifications from a once great university.
I would love to see the Oxford union have the guts to debate the motion that the claims of climate scientists are a violation of the ethics and integrity of science. won’t happen of course, Climate science is about power not integrity and I am getting more and more convinced they have now exceeded the power threshold of invincibility as they are able to remove even internet evidence for all practical levels of accessibility..
“No crook chooses to be externally policed”
Intuitively obvious but powerful statement. Thanks for the simple reminder.