Posted on 13 Aug 17 by Paul Matthews
In many ways, the climate debate has hardly changed since I got interested in it about ten years ago. Public opinion wobbles up and down with hardly any real change. The same tired arguments and claims come round again: every climate conference is the last chance to save the planet; the Arctic ice is always about to vanish in one or two years, or ten years; climate scientists continue to be accused of selecting data sets to create hockeysticks and manipulating data; and teams of climate scientists keep producing reports saying almost exactly the same thing as the previous reports, which then get misrepresented and hyped by the media.
So when something does appear to change it’s worth taking note of. I have a feeling that a split may be developing on the ‘warmist’ side, between what we might call the ‘extremists’ and the ‘moderates’. Here are three recent examples of this.
Consensus?
Some social scientists believe that telling people that there’s a consensus on climate change acts as a ‘gateway belief‘ leading to public action, even though their own data does not really support this claim. Others have questioned this, saying that consensus messaging is an unhelpful distraction, see Geoff’s recent post and also this paper that says that other factors such as scientific integrity are more important.
Uninhabitable Earth?
One of the most ridiculous recent alarmist articles was The Uninhabitable Earth, by a journalist for New Yorker magazine, full of doom, terror, alarm, starvation and plagues. Because of this, it got a lot of attention, which presumably was the intention, and it even has its own wikipedia page. While David Roberts at Vox said that trying to scare people in this way was fine, many mainstream climate scientists criticised the article. A team at Climate Feedback (usually used to attack sceptical articles in the media) said that its scientific credibility was low and it exaggerated the risks. New Scientist said that such doomsday scenarios were unlikely to happen, and even Michael Mann thought that the article overstated the evidence.
Gore’s sequel?
Al Gore has a new film out, called “An Inconvenient Sequel”. He’s currently in the UK promoting it, which started the recent Lawson kerfuffle. Apparently his film has been an inconvenient flop at the box office. It’s no surprise that Bjorn Lomborg in the Wall Street Journal says that the film misses a few inconvenient facts. But what is more inconvenient for Mr Gore is that the Guardian doesn’t like it either, describing it as “desultory and surprisingly vainglorious” and awarding it only two stars. Apparently it is “more a portrait of Gore than a call to arms”.
The left-leaning New Republic writes of The Troubling Return of Al Gore, saying “But not everyone on the left is celebrating Gore’s reemergence—and for reasons that sometimes contradict each other. Some worry he’s too polarizing a figure, and therefore could paralyze progress on climate change.” They also have a paragraph supporting the main hypothesis of this post: “This skepticism about Gore reveals a lot about the climate movement, which has fractured significantly since An Inconvenient Truth. Whereas a decade ago there was a relatively united focus on spreading awareness about climate change, today there is no clear consensus on how to fight it.”
Must be going to snow.
in…Hell
+1
The question is how 97% of the world’s scientists will split. Is it going to be close to 48.5% and 48.5%?
The pro Gore map will likely look similar to this –
Better luck next year…
Highest Recorded Temperatures:
Table of the highest recorded temperatures for each continent..
Place……………………………………………..- Date -……Fahrenheit
North America- (Death Valley), —- July 10, 1913—- + 134.0 F
Africa- Kebili, Tunisia——————- July 7, 1931 — + 131.0 F
Asia- Tirat Tsvi, Israel————- June 21, 1942 —— +129.2 F
Australia- Oodnadatta, South Aust,–Jan. 2, 1960 — + 123.0 F
Europe- Athens, Greece————- July 10, 1977 — + 118.4 F
South America- Rivadavia, Argentina Dec. 11, 1905— +120.0 F
Oceania- Tuguegarao, Philippines— April 20, 1912 — + 108.0 F
Antarctica- Vanda Station, Scott Coast- Jan. 5, 1974 — + 59.0 F
http://wmo.asu.edu/
In the words of physicist Prof Howard “Cork” Hayden:
“If the science were as certain as climate activists pretend, then there would be precisely one climate model, and it would be in agreement with measured data. As it happens, climate modelers have constructed literally dozens of climate models. What they all have in common is a failure to represent reality, and a failure to agree with the other models. As the models have increasingly diverged from the data, the climate clique have nevertheless grown increasingly confident — from cocky in 2001.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/02/climate_consensus_con_game.html
Has ManBearPig been in either the UK or Australia recently? Unusually cold weather, if not the traditional snowstorm.
same in NZ
An Algorhyme, if it pleases:
Pinwheels and Mirrors
A long time ago (in the 80’s or so),
Al Gore warned that warming would soon be alarming;
“Our children won’t know what it’s like to see snow!
Our atmosphere we must stop harming!”
He’d studied, in college, on James Hansen’s knowledge.
Then, over years of political careers,
He pondered this notion: The atmosphere and oceans
Are useful to raise public fears.
He made presentations to all the world’s nations.
His film (sci-fi trash) was a box office smash!
Academy sensation! Oscars, nominations
And copious currents of cash!
Then unto him fell the Peace Prize, Nobel…
Authority, on him was now vested.
(Debates he must quell, for he knows quite well:
Models failed when reality tested.)
So, grew the meme of anthropogenic extreme.
While insiders profited highly,
Those who objected were quickly subjected
To ridicule (and regarded vilely).
Pinwheels and mirrors now litter the lands…
Power lines, mile after mile.
On high plains, sea cliffs and desert sands
Our vistas, they now beguile.
But, collectors of government subsidies
Find them a beautiful sight,
These mechanical menaces… begging a breeze
Or a sunbeam to make their cost right.
Decades upcoming threaten cold’s icy numbing-
Nature’s cycles, in concert, are waning.
The slowness to warm should have cancelled alarm,
But Al never ceases campaigning:
“We humans are bad, with our fossil fuel fad,
It’s a fast-building carbon disaster!
And now it’s two-fold! It’s causing the cold
And the hotness to come so much faster!”
Yet, while he’s pleading that all should be heeding
His carbon reduction ambitions,
He hopes you’re not seeing his own footprint being
Hundreds of poor folks’ emissions.
Let’s hope he’s thought out, while jetting about,
The messages of his actions.
By far they outweigh any words he might say,
In the minds of the wiser factions.
Thank you. That was fun to read…and nice internal rhymes to boot!
Jan
Works as a rap, too, complete with climate gang signs…
Al Gore is a disgrace to society. All his previous forecasts about a warming world have been proven to be false, yet he made millions of dollars for himself out of his lies and scaremongering with his first film. He now has the effrontery to put out this follow up trash, peddling more lies and falsifications. Fortunately, this time his money making venture looks as if it will not help his bank balance as much as his first disgracefully inaccurate film. This might quieten his enthusiasm for preaching falsehoods to the gullible of this world.
He is the type of man who will be rubbing his hands at the deaths caused by the recent mudslide in Sierra Leone. How long will it be before we hear him say “I told you so, look what global warming has done for those poor people, and that such an incident is unprecedented in history”. He is an insult to science and to society and should be prosecuted for the many lies he tells to support his ill gotten gains.
Thanks Jan and Steve, I call that a cross-rhyming verse. I try to imitate Dr. Seuss, among others.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald today, Sydneysiders have “sweated” through das that are 20c above average. Well, yeah, it has been warmer of late, but not THAT warm. Alramisum at it’s best.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/sydney-sweats-through-warm-night-but-cool-weather-is-on-the-way-20170815-gxx15m.html
they state cool weather on the way FALSE bloody cold weather here to stay best snow for years in the snowy ski fields bring on the warming
That would depend on where in Australia you are. Sydneysiders have been
experiencing temperatures that are 20 degrees above average over the last few
days (and that is Celsius not Fahrenheit).
It is out fiendish kiwi plan to burn out the pretenders who claim to have invented the pavlova dessert. As if !
Naturally we sent our taniwha (mythical water monsters) to do the dirty work. They can only be appeased with money (at least, that’s how my tribe handled its Treaty of Waitangi claim).
Was it the highest ever or just “above average”?
“lee August 15, 2017 at 8:16 pm”
Just above average, ie, totally meaningless, but good for a morning scare story what with all the smoke hanging over the city, fortunately now blown out to sea.
So Geronimo .Your telling me that it has been 35 c in Sydney these last few days.News to me.Cut the BS .
Or southern Europe?
A week’s heatwave with 43 degree C temps, 10 degrees over normal?
In Illinois, the people who grow food call that weather.
A whole week!
Sigh, crying wolf ad infinitum has taken too long to catch up with the general population. Or has it already caught up and the warmists are losing? Without MSM support there would be no Global Warming/Whatever It’s Called Now. So who’s the real instigator?
Exactly. Just look at what happened in Britain after the massive alarmist arguments by the government of the day to the idea of leaving the EU. It went ahead. The same will happen after these ever increasing alarmist forecasts that simply never agree with reality. Science if never to be decided by consensus. As Einstein said only one person need produce one valid argument against his theories for them to fail. The Royal Society motto is ‘Take nobody’s word for it’ and it was Copernicus who, by his work, showed us just how fragile time-honoured scientific conceptions can be’. Then of course there is Feynman and his discussion of the Scientific Method and the key to science. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL6-x0modwY
Patrick old chap, if you’ll put the link on its own line it plays:
“As Einstein said only one person need produce one valid argument against his theories for them to fail.”
When he made this remark (or words to this effect), Einstein was being either disingenuous or naive. In the real world, overturning a generally accepted belief takes considerably more than an inconvenient contravening fact. If people’s interests are involved a whole mass of valid arguments can be ignored or suppressed.
Scientific objectivity is a lot rarer than we would like to think — including in Science, itself.
Sceptical lefty,
Einstein was responding to the publication “100 Authors against Einstein” which tried to establish a “German” rebuttal to that “horrid Jewish science”. His rebuke was “Why 100 authors when it would take but one observable fact to prove the whole thing false”. At the time (1931) there were still classicists who didn’t hold with this whole general relativity nonsense – the space and time were obviously two separate things, and who ever heard of space curving? Why that is just absurd! – of course they were all ignoring the Mercury orbit measurements and the 1919 starlight path bending measurements that conformed to general relativity and not classical mechanics. His theory was gaining many adherents, but still had detractors, and even Einstein himself was always looking for holes in the theory. One prediction shown to not conform to reality would have scuttled the whole thing, and after examining the experiment closely, Einstein would have been right there to throw the theory on the pyre. (or to find where his logic was faulty and fix it.)
…and I quote “Don’t believe everything you see on the internet” ~ Albert Einstein.
“Sigh, crying wolf ad infinitum has taken too long to catch up with the general population. Or has it already caught up and the warmists are losing?”
I think that’s it. And the temperatures are not cooperating, either.
The Uninhabitable Earth article was in New York Magazine, not The New Yorker.
That’s really the story of the Left today, just a coalition of various tribal factions going in different directions.
I only know that the progressive socialist movement has permeated every ecological organization and has taken over the (once great) Democratic Party, which used to represent the average working Joe, but now represents the culmination of splinter-groups seeking collective power while competing amongst themselves for “rank in the herd”.
The Democrat Party’s guiding principle has always been to take money from those who earned it so they can give it to those who vote Democrat.
It sounds like the conservative right also.
No. The Establishment in DC may have a few of those thoughts, but actual conservatives out in the hinterlands do not. They are nothing like the far-left Democrats in either thought or action. The conservatives are those who would like to see science return to Feynman’s formulation.
If either alarmists or deniers had any real sense they would learn from events and change the message.
Donald Trump was elected on the back of probably fatuous claims that he would improve the lot in the mid-west, cut down on immigration, build walls, castrate the elites etc etc.
The British voted for Brexit on the back of utterly questionable spin, to express frustration with the elites, and the concept of taking back control..
Jeremy Corbyn in the recent UK general election was a no hoper until he promised to spend lots of money on NHS, education,nationalisation of energy, transport etc , Who could possibly vote against that.
In fairness some voters voted based on habit and/or political ethos – but the overwhelming characteristics of all these campaigns is selling hope – telling people what they want to hear, not how reality is.
The climate change lobby groups have not twigged the change in public perceptions – perhaps driven by social media etc..
Warmists need to tell positive stories of prettified nature – butterflies, happy frogs, endless happy wildlife, children dancing through flower meadows etc. But their main strategy is selling stories of doom and gloom – and this does not work!.
Deniers approach largely relates to criticising data accuracy, computer models and finding selective exceptions all designed to ridicule. A better approach may be selling the benefits to society of clean water, food distribution, education, health care all driven at the moment by fossil fuels
If they tell stories of butterflies then there is no need to “fight” climate change, or to pay any attention to them.
Thanks for telling me how I voted for Brexit. I thought it was for democratic sovereignty and despite vast amounts of spin from the Treasury, Bank of England, IMF and so on. But now I know better.
Sounds like you fell for all the spin, the bizarre belief that a major world economy couldn’t cope with the big bad world in the way other major economies manage.
Always wondered how it would end…
Hi, I’m Al Gore and since the great success of my first movie – millions have ended up paying artificially higher prices for their energy.
And – coincidentally, over the same period – I have become exceedingly rich.
Well, folks, fancy another spin on the wheel, because I’m back with more of the same bullshit.
At least you’re being honest about it being bullshit this time. That’s progress! We might have to let you out some day if you keep this up!
All con jobs start by “educating” the prospect, and end with the prospect taking out his check book.
The prospect then becomes a customer and the proud owner of the best vacuum cleaner in the world, paid for in twelve easy monthly instalments.
Whether the customer ever had a dust problem is beside the point.
20 years following the subject for me.
At least the 1990s had rising average temperatures
that could have had something to do with CO2.
We don’t even have global warming now!
(now = from early 2000s to the 2015/6 El Nino..
And the climate change stories are becoming like tall tales
told by children around the campfire at night.
In my opinion, there never was a real climate debate.
Leftists don’t debate anything they believe in —
otherwise they’d be losing debate after debate !
Skeptical real scientists were ignored 20 years ago.
Now skeptical scientists are character attacked.
I didn’t think the subject was that important to me.
From 1997 to 2014 I wrote just two long articles
on it for my economics newsletter, in 2007 and in 2014.
My man interest was the negative effect on economic growth
from demonizing fossil fuels.
After my 2014 article, it was obvious the average temperature
had been in a flat trend since the early 2000’s
… but, strangely, that was not important to
the mainstream climate junk scientists
and mainstream media.
If the average temperature stopped rising, you’d think the
climate change cult would be happy … but they were even more miserable,
and tried to cover up the “Hiatus” / “Pause” / Flat Trend …
or spin it as a one-time unimportant event.
The rising average temperature trend
from the early 1990s to early 2000’s was gone
… and that did not seem to make any scaremongers
think their predictions about CO2 might have been wrong!
In 2014 it was obvious Climate Change was nothing more than a “secular religion”,
supported only by junk science …. and all religions seem like fairy tales
to this long time atheist.
In 2013 / 2014 we had a very cold winter in Michigan / record snowfall
in the Detroit metropolitan area … causing my water meter in the garage
to freeze and crack.
We’d been living in that house since 1987
… and after all those years of “global warming”
I wondered why it was suddenly so cold in Michigan
… as I paid $300 for a new water meter
… and thought about writing my second article
on global warming as I rented a big propane heater
that took five hours to heat my garage enough to
unfreeze the water pipes going through the concrete floor
to the new water meter.
I wish you had written articles on how the fossil fuel industry’s demonization of nuclear power effected economic growth. That would have been a more worthwhile topic since nuclear power is a million times as energy dense as fossil fuels are and fossil fuels are nowhere near that much better than the renewables proposed by the fossil fuel haters.
The fossil fuel industry may not have been sorry to see Nuclear go down, but it’s a real stretch to imagine that they “caused it”.
No. 1 on the list of what killed nuclear is a Government permitting process that caused construction projects to require at least 15 years (sometimes more) to complete, not to mention making them prohibitively expensive. In comparison, consider that a nat gas fired generator can be online within a year of groundbreaking for the plant. Who would want to be exposed to 15 years of uncertainty in this economic climate? No one, that’s who.
No. 2 also is the relentless scaremongering about Nuclear power done by the left and their fellow travelers. It’s been many years now, but that movie “The China Syndrome” in the 70’s effectively killed nuclear power plant construction in this country. I think there have been, maybe, only 2 new plants successfully permitted and constructed since that movie was made? (there were others already in the pipeline) They may not be so shrill anymore, and some are even starting to regret what they did – but too late now. The nuclear power plant construction biz is dead.
No. 3 – credit Harry Reid with killing any chance for reasonable storage of nuclear waste in this country, just to benefit the Las Vegas casino owners who were sending him cash each month. What corporation wants to be stuck with having to figure out long term nuclear waste storage? Better to just drop the entire concept like a hot potato, which they have done.
With those 3 forces all tag-teaming each other to kill nuclear, there really wasn’t even any part for the fossil fuel producers to play. Now of course they didn’t mind it happening, but give credit to where credit is due.
davidgmills is quite right. Prior to receiving massive funding from trust funds from the petroleum industry, antinuclear groups were mostly a bunch of hairy hippies that no one much listened to until Walter Cronkite went completely off his nut and called TMI the worst industrial accident of all time.
As to your objections, wws, they all have large roles, but the consistent drumbeat of antinuclear scaremongering is indeed maintained by funding from fossil fuel industries. As recently as eight years ago, Enbridge was listed as a leading sponsor of an Ontario antinuclear group, the Ontario Clean Air Alliance.
It’s now ironic that the very groups they helped to fund into the lobby monster they are today have turned on them. These same antinuclear groups have been instrumental in killing off several oil and gas pipelines in Canada. I have no sympathy for the gas companies; they’re getting bit by the monstrosity they helped create.
That’s the problem with making a deal with the Devil (being dishonest for momentary gain). The Devil always wins in the end. Some have claimed that the whole AGW brouhaha gained prominence when Margaret Thatcher saw fit to use it as a way to bludgeon recalcitrant coal miners into submission. I don’t have enough information to take a stand on that, but even people I admire make mistakes sometimes. And, it fits with my main theme – don’t make deals with the Devil.
The fossil fuel industry has no control over those trust funds.
The people who run them tend to be far left in their political and economic outlooks.
Trying to blame the industry for what a handful of trust fund babies have been doing with their money is lunacy.
I remember that Michigan winter quite well. I had accepted work down in Alabama that February and remember leaving Ypsilanti at 4 am, about 5 degrees outside, which I think it had been for weeks at that point. All of the highways going through Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky were sheets of ice as the salt has no effect at those temperatures. The last ice I saw was in northern Alabama. The drive took over 18 hours. I arrived in Mobile two weeks after they’d had one of those once in a decade snow falls which shut the entire state down for 3 days. Apparently the liquor stores still managed to stay open during that time at least.
“Richard Greene August 15, 2017 at 10:54 am
20 years following the subject for me. At least the 1990s had rising average temperatures
that could have had something to do with CO2. We don’t even have global warming now!”
I’ve pulled out and re-read early reactions to the NAS Hockey Stick reports in the late summer in 2006 at Prof. Pielke, Jr’s blog notes.
What was striking to me was an admission by a group of climatologists and modellers in Germany. They admitted an emotionalist rationale to believe in Mann’s hockey stick and AGW theory: the temperatures were rising rapidly in the 1990s and this provided and explanation.
In short, he admitted to giving in to the urgent moment or circumstantial necessity for providing their agreement. So much for sound and sober scientific thinking…..
The Wegman report, as well as the Hockey Stick report, gave some a chance to reconsider themselves. Perhaps our era of AGW-falsification and Trump’s canning the Paris Agreement will generate a new and longer period for reconsidering the ‘science.’
I find it revealing how the Left always points to the corrupting influence of money when discussing skeptics, yet they refuse to address Gore’s Inconvenient Fortune.
They view themselves as perfect and incorruptible. That’s why them making money is no big deal.
Now on the other hand, lesser beings can’t handle money, which is why the left doesn’t want them to have any.
Joe, I think most of them actually believe in it.
I address it. I think it is disgusting. And I consider myself to be far left of Gore who is a neo-liberal. But then I think most neo-liberals are disgusting.
Given the legacy of Socialism, including the uniform failure of leftist states and the 10’s and 10’s and 10’s of millions they have murdered, anyone still considering him/her self a leftist is pretty much either blind to history, cretinous, ideologically fixated (alt-cretinous), or actively malignant.
What Pat Frank said!
Pat, the fact that they push socialism doesn’t say that they actually believe in it. It only says that they think they know what is best for all us/the unwashed, and it’s only a marketing tactic to enable them to gain control. Of course the excellent brainwashing system they have now installed in K through 12 and most universities has already prepared the next several crops of future voters for the pusher’s take over of government and society. I think reason and critical thinking have lost the battle. Glad I won’t be around to see the final outcome, it’s probably a just bit to far in the future.
Joe, I think most of them believe in it.
Sorry about the repetition, pushed the wrong reply button. 🙂
“Joe, I think most of them believe in it.”
Those are the true believers. The chumps and cannon fodder for the cynics who manipulate them for their own ends.
Trouble is, “liberal” doesn’t mean what it used to mean, a free-thinker. Most of today’s “Liberals” are stuck in rigid thinking patterns, lock-step, anything but liberal.
In the 60’s, they went on and on about being non-conformists.
Then you pull the camera back, and every one of them was wearing a tie died tee-shirt and dirty blue jeans.
LOL! Seriously – “Gore’s Inconvenient Fortune” is a new and memorable tag-line for me. THANKS!
Will Hell freeze over when Al Gore visits it? Since he has a track record of producing cold wherever he goes.
He will not be a visitor. He’ll be a permanent resident.
Did I just see a pig doing immelmanns outside my window?
There will be a major celebration in Hell when AlGore gets there.
Then it will get TOO cold, and they will think again.
The man was on BBC Radio this morning in the UK. He was treated like the Pope. He had the gall to equate Climate Alarmism with say Black Rights and other human rights movements. And was unchallenged. So it continues.
And the UK has had a very cold August so far.
Not only that his influence has spread as far south as Central France.
And the rest of Europe has had record highs from the Lucifer heat wave. Some have said it’s because the UK voted for Brexit. Me I think it is because of the North Atlantic low temperature anomaly caused by increased flow from the Arctic region and so blocking the Gulf Stream, so that that nasty high pressure region does not extend over the UK.
He, like Obama and Tony Blair, has a Messiah Complex.
He has been looking for a cause that he can espouse to save the world, all his life.
Mencken called it “the messianic delusion.”
The pope is full of B.S. too, so maybe that’s appropriate. Gore probably has a hat like that at home.
There’s good reason for this. The Pope is the first Franciscan allowed as head of the Church. He’s also a devotee of Liberation Theology, so there was bound to be trouble with him.
chg: I believe he’s a Jesuit.
jesuit, n., a crafty, intriguing, or equivocating person.
When is the British judge going to review Al’s new movie? He was rather hard on Al’s first movie. It required a disclaimer before it could be shown to British school children, because it was so full of errors.
The Warmist ideology is in its death throes, so yes, the various factions are fighting each other in a desperate attempt to save what’s left of it. Fun to watch.
IMHO, that ideology is in it’s death throes ONLY if DJT can hold office and influence for two terms.
Do you think Warmist ideology would be in trouble if HRC won?
The UN “democracy” and the consensus scientists would have papered over any doubts.
Most of the world still “believes”; even the middle of the road rational, data driven “facts” from someone like Lomborg or Pielke Jr. do not sway them. (In the US; Curry, Spenser, Christie and Lindzen are belittled.)
Pruitt (and allies like Cruz) need to keep countering ridiculous claims while at the same time cut off funding for the most egregious warmist partisans in government.
‘…the Guardian doesn’t like it either, describing it as “desultory and surprisingly vainglorious” ‘
Not really surprising if you’d been paying attention. Even his first film was more about Albert Jr. than about the looming threat of Thermaggedon. The man is an egomaniac, who sees global warming as a personal challenge to his authority. The whole point of doing a sequel was to get him in front of the cameras again to be seen saving the world. He couldn’t stand to be overshadowed by that pipsqueak Leo DiCaprio.
The surprise isn’t the description itself, the surprise is that even the Guardian decided not to glorify the film anyway. Compare that description to the Guardian overviews of the first one:
“Philip French: ‘Every man, woman and child in the country should see this film, if necessary at the point of a gun.’
Peter Bradshaw:
4 out of 5 A fascinating film.”
Oh, yes. Liberals getting to “the point of a gun”.
No consensus on how to fight it. It is increasingly clear that there is nothing to fight at all.
True, very true. Fossil fuels are the enemy; therefore that leaves hydro, nuclear, wind, and solar as the panacea for our glorious future.
Whoops, no nuclear! It’s radioactive and will be thusly so for tens of thousands of years. No go with that.
Whoops; no more hydro! Almost all of the best places have been built out and capacity is near max.
Whoops; no wind blows 24/7! And the wind swept area leaves low energy density to harvest.
Whoops; no solar 24/7! Even MSR’s have their problems, and battery capacity simply can’t handle it.
So yes, you’ve made a very astute point—that there is no solution, and therefore all the ballyhooing hyperbole is mindlessly wasted.
Has been more or less the same for more than 30 years…possibly 40.
IMO there was a change around 2014, with alarmism declining in the wake of the Pause. The subsequent El Niño has given alarmism a second wind. And, maybe, hung it out to dry, if a cooling trend forllows it.
The problem is that most of the people in the US, if not the world, are unaware of (or contest) the pause.
The “consensus” scientists have long since turned to “Climate Change” and evolving to “Climate Disruption” counting on the fact that humans tend to think that today is “the worst ever” regardless whether the topic is adolescent or civil behavior or climate.
Roger, if “climate scientists” were trained in the required disciplines as they were 50 years ago we would be in good shape. Instead, “climate science” parallels journalism. In the 1st half of the the 20th Century journalists were hard nosed reporters. After Woodward and Bernstein journalism was where you wanted to be “to make a difference” and take down the establishment – what are now called “social warriors”. Those entering Climate Science are also chasing a cause.
Portrait of Gore? That would require an IMAX.
Here in Western Canada I cannot distinguish today’s weather from the mid 70’s.
I heard both Gore and Lawson on the Today programme.
Gore failed miserably to further his case and Lawson demolished his arguments with relative ease.
Needless to say the climatarati – both BBC and non BBC – were called to arms over giving Lawson airtime to spout his ‘heresy’.
According to the Independent newspaper Laws on has retracted his argument.
Assuming you mean Lawson, please give a more specific reference about the “retraction”.
Geaoge Daddis please read The Independent ‘Nigel Lawson Admits Claim that Global Temeratures have Fallen was False, it has been out for 11hours
There should be a Cnut the Great prize for the most idiotic climate claim, it would be good to start with the sea…
How dare you mock Oscar Al and his Nobel pals like that.
In fairness, Gore is in the no science CAGW camp.
Most scientists in the AGW camp are fairly moderate as well and the IPCC reports, all be it a little over zealous, are also fairly moderate. Maybe that changes in the next one. Not that im saying its all good, but it does its best to stay calm.
But then you have the ones drivimg the extreme AGW/not quite CAGW train and these are the ones politicians/MSM are all too eager to share a ride with. Luckily, although Trump was the only one to outright do it, most countries have little to no intention of honouring their pinky promises regarding the Paris agreement.
Yes the reports themselves are relatively moderate, but the 50 page abstract/summary, is a political document which always grossly overstates the climate issue. What does the press report on, the actual report or the hysterical abstract? Yes, they report on the hysterical abstract and no-one bothers to see if it jibes with the actual report.
The press actually acts as an amplifier of excess of doom, and comprehensively blocks all discussion of the sceptic rebuttals.
Am not sure how to take Gore’s real impact. He clearly is a gifted, smooth talking communicator that can sound completely convincing in selling you whatever it is that he would be selling. But many people know this, including those that don’t buy the sensationalizing of climate science/climate change which is what defines him.
He will continue to be well received by those that already agree with him of course and can add some enthusiasm to that group……….the ones that feel the objective is most important, even more important than getting the scientific facts exactly right.
He will also continue to be very polarizing to those that disagree with him, especially because he sensationalizes so much. Watching a presentation by him, for a skeptic can be torture……….. to the skeptic and the authentic facts.
With certainty, he is not going to bring people together. This is an absolute impossibility because one side is so turned off by exactly what he does……..sensationalize and exaggerate human caused climate change/global warming to inspire political actions.
The question is whether he can unite enough people to make a positive difference for his cause. This means converting some on the fence, that might go in his direction. Converting people that detest his blatant exaggerations can’t happen because he is still marketing climate change with more blatant exaggerations of the science.
I think that the power to per-sway using blatant exaggerations may have already peaked. Many catastrophic climate change and global warming projections have evaded having to reconcile with realities, like a meteorological prediction must do so with weather……….because it will take decades to verify or bust.
But 2 decades of mostly over predicting temperatures and other extremes for instance is making it tougher and tougher to alarm even more people even more than they were earlier, with even more alarming predictions.
Even blaming every big hurricane, tornado outbreak, heat wave(and if you are John Holdren-extreme cold) and flood on human caused climate change seems to have run its course because the number of these events blamed on human caused climate change………..even if they are all from human caused climate change, is not going up enough to alarm people more than they were before.
When Gore’s first movie came out, we didn’t have so many inconvenient contrasting truth’s available with so much indisputable evidence……..the planet greening up, the pause, 95% of global models too warm, oceans not increasing as predicted, Arctic ice not melting as fast as predicted, hurricanes not increasing as predicted, tornadoes decreasing, Climategate, and so on.
In 2006, Al Gore could speculate with impunity.
In 2017, we can hold him accountable in a way that was not possible 11 years ago.
We have entered a time frame, more than a decade that affords us the opportunity to hold some of these weather and climate projections and their sources accountable.
Most of Gore’s supporters will continue to see his mission, “saving the planet” as one that trumps everything else, including being held to previous predictions. Most of those that see him as selling climate snake oil will continue to see him as a climate alarmist for political action.
How many are undecided?
As an operational meteorologist rooted in observations and realities of weather and climate, it’s hard to gauge the 99.99% of people that have less informed opinions about those topics. One would think, however that since most of the predictions( heavy rain/high end flooding events are an exception) have been under performing for the past 2 decades, that a continuation of over predicting and exaggeration is going to have less and less impact/credibility.
Sensationalizing can overcome this………..but only short term. When you start sensationalizing the sensationalized, for more impact, there is a peak impact at some point.
Either the weather/climate truly does become catastrophic on a widespread scale as predicted and you convert the non believers or skeptics or it doesn’t happen and you may start to lose some of the believers, no matter how sensationalized the marketing.
However, in today’s world of fake and exaggerated news, ironically, massive information is making a lot of people dumber. What often drives peoples search for new information, is not critical thinking but confirmation bias. People seek out sites with other people that have the same belief system(s) as they do. They look for articles that confirm what they think they know and discard information that does not line up with what they think they already know. They form incredibly strong bonds with belief systems, sources/people that determine the way that they think.
This makes manipulation of the masses, almost like they are members of a cult possible in a way that I certainly couldn’t have predicted.
I don’t pretend to have an answer.
Gore is not a scientist yet he has a pulpit (amazingly not contaminated by his political beliefs ).
What the realist side needs is an equally popular (but not political) spokesperson who can grab the media attention to counter EACH and EVERY one of Gore’s ridiculous assertions as soon as he utters them.
Even then that person has to break through the media wall.
This is the key paragraph in Mike Maguire’s post:
Most of Gore’s supporters will continue to see his mission, “saving the planet” as one that trumps everything else, including being held to previous predictions. Most of those that see him as selling climate snake oil will continue to see him as a climate alarmist for political action.
Most of the arguments are by various branches of physics, including meteorology, geology, etc. But the issue is saving “the world,” which means THE BIOSPHERE, including human health. This is where the alarmists wrecking the economy (worldwide losses in the trillions of dollars–yet alarmists think nothing is being done) is important: humans die if economics are bad enough, and biosphere well-being has been repeatedly shown to require a strong economy first.
More importantly, there are REAL pollutants that threaten human health, and the “greenies” who imagine that they are doing something about them are ruining their credibility and distracting their friends with fake-science baloney. If you REALLY want to save the world, this is what needs to be said.
The basic on the whole screaming match is the Keeling curve–rising carbon dioxide. Some of this must be fossil fuels, but worldwide, soils have been STERILIZED, and that must have put a lot of carbon into the air. Part of the Paris agreement was to “sequester carbon in the soil.” THAT is what is so desperately needed, and the reason that so little is being done is because the enviros have too little understanding of what real science actually is and how to evaluate it.
Please stop using the term “the masses”. That Marxist term has no singular, for a reason.
The cyclical period of ice loss in the Arctic is concluded. As ice area and volume begin to grow the last scales will fall from reasonable people’s eyes. The doommongers will become even more shrill and ridiculous and people will begin to see them for what they are. Then, as the doommongers realize the battle is lost, most will shrink away back into the shadows to think of other ways to dress up Socialism as beneficial. Once again, the young will be their targets.
Neither has grown this year John.
Extent and volume lower than last year… ice thinner…
is that why Greenland gained 250 GT of ice this year?
What an unconvenient truth so unconvenient that NOAA even discontinued their greenland curve….
“One of the most ridiculous recent alarmist articles was The Uninhabitable Earth, by a journalist for New Yorker magazine”
It was, as you correctly link, published by the ‘New York Magazine’, not the ‘New Yorker’ magazine. Although the current New Yorker editor is probably jealous he hasn’t published something equally ridiculous.
Do not people realize that every single person alive today will die.
Just not together.
every single person alive today will die.
===≠=======
Anything, so long as we don’t have to watch another Gore movie.
The New Yorker has no reason to be jealous. They have this, from David Remnick, November 9, 2016:
“The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism. Trump’s shocking victory, his ascension to the Presidency, is a sickening event in the history of the United States and liberal democracy. On January 20, 2017, we will bid farewell to the first African-American President—a man of integrity, dignity, and generous spirit—and witness the inauguration of a con who did little to spurn endorsement by forces of xenophobia and white supremacy. It is impossible to react to this moment with anything less than revulsion and profound anxiety…Waaah, waaah, waaah…”
Remnick spews drivel at some length from his bubble. He is no slacker in the purple prose department, even compared to The New York Magazine and its Warmist eco-chamber.
… Most Holy Father of Climate Alarmism
Not enough backwards turning hurricanes photoshopped onto the earth behind him.
^¿^
Gee, the last time Gore wore that much white, he was on a massage table…
I was quite stunned to hear an advert on independent radio (in the UK) promoting Gore’s new film as if it was some Hollywood block buster today, urging people to book their tickets for its cinema release on Friday!
This came after I’d switched the TV off in disgust over a news item about a sailing ship of scientists setting off for 6 weeks across the Arctic to prove how little ice there is and how ships can now easily sail across the region due to the lack of ice and global warming.
First, the timing of this development is unmistakably the arrival of Trump on the scene. He made it ok to express contrary opinions that even warmistst proponents had regarding the degree and urgency of action. Dyed in the wool catastrophists like Michael man realized more balanced remarks might be the way to appear thoughtful and sincere under an existential nightmare.
And let’s face it, to lampoon a ridiculous, pompous A55 like make-it- up Albert has been something the former solidarity climate clones have wanted to do but feared weakening the ‘force’. The late Stephen Schneider’s admonition, which I paraphrase as follows :
“Each one of you Climateers has to decide how far you are prepared to deviate from honesty and integrity to promote climate бцllsнiтт and keep the gravy train rolling and on time”
This guy did more to give possibly reasonable people the freedom to do whatever lуiиg and снеатiиg they could dream up to perpetrate the worst, иеомагкsбrотнегэ фгацd ever perpetrated for the cause. What a legacy! He was a coauthor of the previous global cooling offensive and club of Rome doomster along with Wrong Way Ehrlich and This is a Hold up Holdren.
Agreed.
Maybe I can give credence to the claim that that that remark was taken out of context. But like what DJT is experiencing today, some of his followers such as the self named “hockey team” may have taken it too literally. “Never express doubt”, “Predict the extreme”.
The inconvenient squirrel is more like it . At least this flop is the last we have to hear about .
Is Paramount going to back another dog ? Maybe Dicaprio can hussle up some off shore cash .
Paramount’s bean counters took great care to maximize box office draw over distribution outlay. If they’re to blame for anything, it’s not selling the farm to distribute that turkey.
Spilt?
Healthy debate about the issues that are actually debatable.
But…BUt…But…this is SETTLED SCIENCE!!!
An AGW alarmist freudian ‘spilt’, I’m 97% certain…..
If climate science was ‘settled’, there would only be one climate model and it would be validated and certified to predict future climate changes with high fidelity. There would be no need for ‘ensembles of climate edsels’ that provide no better predictive capabilities than an old crone poking through steaming chicken guts.
Until that ‘settled science’ day, it is all actually debatable.
“Whereas a decade ago there was a relatively united focus on spreading awareness about climate change, today there is no clear consensus on how to fight it.”
When there’s very little it to “it”, it’s hard to fight it, i’n it?
“Desultory and
surprisinglyvainglorious”Why would anyone think Gore as being vainglorious is surprising?
MY recommendation to Trump would be to turn this into an economic issue rather than an ideological choice. Germany went “renewable” only a few years ago when their energy prices were comparable to ours; they are now 3 X. Obama said his restrictions on coal would make your electricty prices sky rocket.
Hit them in the pocket book.
George, have you read that article in the Independant regarding Lawson retracting his claim yet?
The debate will go on even if the temperatures fall over ten – fifteen years. Is it the begin of an ice age, or natural variation, or only a pause in warming?
Why no mention of James Hansen? He is the poster child of the true believer, shunted aside because his extreme views make all such Paris type agreements out to be nothing but financial frauds. The movement is now in the hands of the pragmatists who are milking the movement for all its worth. It is no wonder there is a split.
The true colors of climate silencers is part of the current larger hissy fit from those who simply want what they want , including rewriting history to fit their values . Don’t like a sculpture tear it down .
These were the witch burners of yester year .
The new police oath is stand and video .
Paul, I think there’s a better way to argue your point with AGW-believers. Let’s recap his thesis and then state my refinements.
So much stasis and repetition of themes, claims and counterclaims, Paul writes. “So when something does appear to change it’s worth taking note of. I have a feeling that a split may be developing on the ‘warmist’ side, between what we might call the ‘extremists’ and the ‘moderates’. ”
I’ve noticed a split too. And until now, I thought I was alone in my perceptions.
I’ve been writing up my sceptic thoughts to a Believer audience of science savvy readers in a philosophy group (“Denver philosophy” at meetup.com). And here’s my title – worth quoting because it frames my thesis – “Global warming? How the ‘climate crisis’ ends…with a whimper, not a bang.”
In contrast to Paul’s generalization of two groups, I focus on the loss of the “settled science” consensus front among leading alarmist climate scientists. “The science is settled” has been the advocate’s mantra since the Great Prophet James Hansen spoke to Congress in June of 1988. And in a presentation to Doctor’s for Disaster Preparedness in 2014 (I think), Richard Lindzen noted that ‘science fads’ often appear to run in roughly 30 year intervals – an anniversary falling to us next year for dangerous man-made global warming.
To list a few examples of science fads: the eugenics scare – which emerged from seemingly dangerous falling IQs of subnormal immigrants, discovered from mass Army testing in 1918 (ie, World War One conscripts); chemophobia sparked by dangerous pesticides like DDT by Rachel Carson in 1962; and global overpopulation – or ‘Population Bomb’ from 1968.
Last night, I added the necessity of doing a detailed timeline to better document my thesis. Therefore, instead of two groups like Paul, I wonder if it is three or even four?
Gaia theorist James Lovelock outright REVERSING his opinion, based on the evidence of a lack of dangerous measured global warming. Then there’s a growing recent group of temporizing scientists who keep up the old-time religion by moving the goalposts: people like Mann and Ben Santer, as well as James Hansen (I think).
Finally, there are people like Sir John Houghton, who, when he retired last decade, turned to religion to promote science: he invoked religious ethics to DO something to contain that Devil, man-made Carbon Dioxide. Joining him since then are NCAR’s director Kevin Trenberth in his debate at the University of Colorado at Boulder, April 2014. And now Al Gore chimes in: ” Former Vice President Al Gore told a Catholic priest that tackling man-made global warming is ‘not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual issue’ during a town hall event on CNN Tuesday night.” (http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/08/al_gore_calling_global_warming_a_spiritual_issue.html)
Last but not least – what do we do with the late Stephen Schneider? Instead of religion, he invokes not natural science but social sciences – global warming theory ought to be judged more like education policy or crime policy! In other words, falsification need not apply. Instead, we have to wait three or more decades to find out if it works. (SEE the final chapter in “The Age of Global Warming” by Rupert Darwall. Apparently, Schneider says this in lectures that may be found online.)
At any rate, three or four groups – the point is that Hansen announced a party-line front in 1988. And ever since then, despite his lie then that even human attribution was “science,” we’ve heard that “the science is settled.”
If the science is “settled,” then how come we see this breakdown in consensus justifications? How come leading “scientists” are turning away from natural science? Maybe it wasn’t scientific after all? Or has the failure and falsification become too much to deny?
In either case, regardless of one’s chosen Prophet of Doom, one either rationalizes away the prediction failures or else move on to find “better” oracles – New Prophets of Doom?
My thesis is that Believers in CGWA now face a serious dilemma – and road opening up several forks ahead offer the opportunity for serious people to re-think their “settled science” thinking.
Al Gore is a grotesque and annoying figure. I would advise the green groups to denounce him and get rid of him if they want public support. Get somebody more pleasant and respectable to represent you like Lisa Randall or Richard Alley. Many of the your spokesmen are just annoying and dumb
Other annoying green figures: Naomi Oreskes, Michael Mann, Bill Nye, John Cook, John Holdren, James Hansen, etc. and all placard-bearing shouting activists. Flush them down the drain for your own good
BREAKING NEWS FROM GERMANY!! WUWT dislodged NoTricksZone as the top producer of “fake news”
“Watts Up with That is one of the most radical climate-denier blogs that exists in the entire Internet. This site has only one purpose, namely to permanently produce fake news… ”
http://notrickszone.com/#sthash.KAZ1y2NY.dpbs
Gotta love it!