This article is in response to the personal castigation meted out by Dr.Tim Ball on myself after I wrote an earlier article on a population growth seminar that I had attended.
by Robert McCarter
Hi Tim,
I know that you have been the brunt of much of the blowback from your position on CAGW and I know that you are frustrated, especially from the lack of support of others. I even understand that you are using my once good name as an Everyman, that obsequious clod, ducking his responsibilities and making only a pathetic attempt to hide his neighbor from the Nazis knocking on the door. Perhaps it was my apologies that you found unctuous, for me they were a thin joke on being Canadian.
Please note that my article you have panned is not about my sudden and late awareness of CAGW it is about my awareness of the underlying and overzealous socialism behind it. I have of course read articles with this premise but there is such polarized feeling about socialism in the US that I added that grain of salt. It was seeing it for myself that convinced me of the political not environmental concerns that were driving the issue. I wrote the article suspecting that many others suspend belief when articles focus on leftist politics and I wanted to convey my experience to aid their own decisions about what is true. Not my intent to swing in on a low hanging bough to snatch the fruit from those who planted the tree.
You have had a lot of vitriol poured in your direction and I think that many of the readers at WUWT are grateful for the robust way you have countered. Certainly I have admired your well thought out essays. However I am not sure you should be defecating on the latter day converts, not good form for the many millions of others we have to win to this side. If you excoriate the first kid to hold up his hand, do you get many more questions. We don’t all have that fine PhD nor the tenured position in a university from which to espouse our ideas, a lot of us are just ordinary people that aren’t even listened to by our wives. Most do not have the training to make decisions from observations, most have too much trust in authority.
And I am not that latter day, I first looked at the global warming issue over 20 years ago. Once burned on global cooling, twice treading with caution. I became skeptical when I looked up the composition and overlapping absorbance of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, realizing that water vapor should overwhelm the small amount of CO2 and doubling almost nothing still resulted in almost nothing. I am not a meteorologist or a climate scientist, just a ‘pathetic’ MSc Zoologist and a long time ago at that – but I keep studying. Where I work and live there is not a large scientific community and those that are there seem to be accepting of arguments from authority.
A few years ago I was fortunate to meet Brian Peckford (that one) and he pointed me towards Matt Ridley and then in turn to WUWT and other sites pro and con. For the past three years I have read many (many) articles from global population to windmills trying to suss out the signal from the noise and there is a lot of noise. I read ‘State of Fear’ a poor read as a novel but an excellent read about climate change. I bought several copies and distributed them to friends. I have continued to inundate my friends with articles from WUWT and others. Some friends could care less, others get indignant, lost one friend last week, another holding on by a fishing line. Some accept the non catastrophic story one week then along comes a hurricane and they are back to the beginning. I have about as much influence as I have flatulence but I am still passing gas.
We don’t get many lectures on population growth or climate change in our little town. I attended and I was the only person in a 200 person sycophantic audience who stood to contradict the speaker with factual information. He weaseled away his reply and the audience didn’t seem to note the deception. There is another lecture (Climate Change and Sustainability) this coming Saturday and I plan on attending, even invited some friends. Hey, I’m trying here and if I get dumped with dung how do you think I feel about next time. Are you doing the same thing as your green adversaries and trying to shut me down?
CAGW or the next great scare will not go away until we educate more people and that will not happen if it becomes an exclusive club for the cognoscenti. You have even recognized this need for better education in earlier articles. I agreed with you and as a long time educator I have developed methods to teach students to think. I even contacted you on your website about a year ago and have yet to get a reply.
I think, perhaps, if you’d started off with this information it might have helped. I know it’s helped calm me.
Your thesis concerning socialism was lost on me in the original post, especially as you lumped it in with politics. There are all kinds of politics and the mistake I made reading your prior post was thinking you were referring to “politics” as the internecine squabbling inherent amongst all scientists versus the overt “socialism” (or rather what seems to be overt to some of us) of the actual politicians and activist scientists.
Knowing that you meant them as one and the same clears up some of the misconceptions I had. But the tone is also lacking. It comes across as a “whoopsie-daisy, I guess I messed up, oh well” kind of apology that I might hear from one of my children rather than a realization of the seriousness of the problem.
Socialism is not a viable political philosophy that sits as an equal amongst other viable political philosophies. It is a cancer that destroys and devours lives, communities, nations and cultures. The catastrophic warming religion is a glue that is being used to stitch together the disparate remnants of the shattered Comintern, including those that had gone dormant in the West.
Realizing this should fill you with a little more dread than was detectable in your prior post. So while I agree your castigation was too strong, perhaps take a moment to consider the stakes in this struggle, and realize how your prior words were likely to be viewed by those for whom this venture has been all-consuming.
Good post Robert
Mr. McCarter show your friends that 75 out of 77, which is where the 97% comes from. I bet that they will be shocked.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/10/an-oopsie-in-the-doranzimmerman-97-consensus-claim/
“However I am not sure you should be defecating on the latter day converts”
Good point Robert. Skeptics need to welcome people to come out of the closet, not shame them, even if they have ‘wronged’.
“Gentlemen,” Ben Franklin quipped (perhaps apocryphally) “we must all hang together, or we will most assuredly all hang separately.”
Good post – Now is the best time for people who have kept their mouths shut about climate dogma to pipe up.
“I have about as much influence as I have flatulence but I am still passing gas.”
First chuckle of the day.
In 2001, the IPCC (The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) the political body governing the “science” of AGW as it was then known, issued their agreement with our position: “In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.” This is buried in the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (2001), Section 14.2.2.2. page 774. Can’t deny that! We call this the prime principle of climate science, and affirm it except for one reservation, and that is the solar activity of the sun with its cyclical patterns. We are climate affirmers based on the IPCC’s principle just quoted.
“The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by precedent, by implication, by erosion, by default, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other – until the day when they are suddenly declared to be the country’s official ideology. “~ Ayn Rand
IPCC’s uncontested absurdity is to attempt to prove, what they have admitted cannot be proved.
The absurdity of Robert’s position is to claim he is an educator and did not recognize the obvious con game involved. This has been about politics from the very beginning, and Robert has been an enabler, and his apology still smells of the same behavior.
We are not climatologists, or the like, but we have been fighting what wind farms are doing to eagles and other wildlife since this scheme was foisted on the public. We are still losing business opportunities because of our position, but we will stay the course, because we are educators who understand the difference between science and Scientology.
Raptor Education Foundation
“True believers” infest both sides of the climate debate. That in turn turns off the persuadable.
Only True Believers concern themselves with the motives or prior beliefs of people who are otherwise sympathetic to the cause, whatever the cause is .. or try to establish and police some sort of weird True Believer pecking order, like Nazi’s assigning themselve party ID numbers to show who was a real Nazi first … ditto with communists, and any other “ists” in the world of True Believerism.
Frankly, Ball is an idiot and a True Believer
Skepticism does not require a litmus test of True Believerism.
If you want to persuade anyone, you have to drop the True Believerism. Our skepticism of CAGW is not a matter of faith or politics, the two usual forms of True Believerism. It is a matter of science, and using one’s brain.
Mr McCarter, you acknowledge Dr Ball has been dumped on and did not turn away but are suggesting if you get a little dung on yourself you might turn away? Consider it a hazing. You will live.
Robert – a good post, thank you.
My post here was not about you, but about all those who now know that global warming alarmism is a false crisis, but are unwilling to speak out
.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/10/15/collapse-of-global-warming-deception-triggers-variety-of-bailouts-and-revisionism/comment-page-1/#comment-2637687
Regards, Allan
A good and reasoned reply. Thank you for keeping your head.
Below are both, a transcript and video of interview with Norman Dodd,
Norman Dodd, former staff director of the Special Committee to Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations. Mr. Dodd reveals that the major foundations have been promoting an agenda that has little to do with charity or good works. The objective has been to move the U.S. into acceptance of a world government, based on the principles of socialism, which is to be ruled covertly by those same interests which control the foundations. 45 min.
Transcript: http://www.supremelaw.org/authors/dodd/interview.htm
Video: youtube.com/watch?v=c5eHdTk5hjw
This is all difficult to believe until you accumulate the massive amounts of evidence available, that evidence is out there for the curious to find. But you have to seek it out.
More: “Tragedy and Hope” by Bill Clinton’s acknowledged mentor, Foreign Service
Schools of Georgetown University history professor, Carol Quigley has the
following quote about the Shadow Government and socialism.
“There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international
Anglophile network which operates, to some extent in the way the radical
Right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may
identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the
Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the
operation of this network because I have studied it for twenty years, and
was permitted for two years, in the early 1960s, to examine its papers and
secret records…. [I]n general my chief difference of opinion is that it
wishes to remain unknown….” Carroll Quigley, “Tragedy and Hope: A History
of the World in Our Time” (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1966), pages,
950.
Well written response. Appreciate the many good points. Together we shall shine a light on the scientific truth.
The scientific truth has been coming out……make that gushing out…… with or without acknowledgement from one side. Speculative models cannot remain un-reconciled to the reality of observations forever and its in the best for all interests to get on board with the realities of authentic empirical data.
Those that take the longest to do so and have been shouting the loudest with the most attention and distortion of the science will suffer the greatest embarrassment.
Al Gore, Michael Mann, John Cook and others will have to face the unkind music eventually for intentionally sabotaging authentic science. One can just imagine what history will say about them.
That’s the thing. There is a long record of their “definitive” type statements that predict extreme scenarios that will either verify or bust badly. This is what they will be judged by. Even now, the early stages of some bad busts are happening in front of us.
Writing as one whose career and marriage were wrecked by “speaking truth to power” I have a lot of empathy for Dr. Ball.
Nevertheless, I concur with McCarter’s admonition that, in the long run, vindictiveness and triumphalism are counter-productive for both an individual and the effort to reach the long term goal.
Robert McCarter –
Thanks for posting this. My reaction to Tim Ball’s article was similar .. “Whoa! This is totally unnecessary”.
Tim has been through a lot and I guess we can excuse his rather unnecessary response. I agree with Tim on much, but I could do without that posting. When you’ve a lot of powerful enemies, you should value your friends..
Welcome aboard, we’ll get there.
More a case of when I become more aware of the facts I change my mind and rightly so, but at the same time with this CAGW/climate change/extreme weather/coral bleaching/ocean acidification/won’t you think of the penguins meme, you become increasingly aware it aint about science but all about virtue signalling just like we’ve seen with Hollywood recently. Well you have to give them all due credit as great actors under the circumstances.
That’s the beauty and simplicity of virtue signalling as it has such universal appeal to vacuous dilettantes and the intellectually lazy because it costs nothing personally to do so. Unfortunately there’s the hoary old problem of the fallacy of composition but I remain ever optimistic the climate change virtue signallers will go the same way as Bollockswood.
Agree – let us keep politics out of debates about climate change. The two are mutually irrelevant.
It is interesting that when these ‘Climate Scientists’ are challenged they play the man instead of the ball.
sir, you were not a later day convert … you were a coward who remained silent …
OKaaaaaaaaaaay. WUWT is now morphing into Facebook.
Coming soon – Swipe right for Denyr , swipe left for Warmist.
More science please, Anthony, and rather less personal jousting. I am VERY interested in furthering our understanding of the workings of the atmosphere. I have less than 0.04% interest in listening to person arguments about who insulted who when they said this that or the other.
You guys are playing with your food here. What more is needed than this statement (below)? Nothing!
Christiana Figueres executive secretary of the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism. (http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/021015-738779-climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism.htm?src=AURLDLQ)
This is a political issue — not a scientific one!
I have written on skeptics eating their own. There is sometimes little tolerance for differences of opinion. The “you’re for us or against us” mentality is quite noticeable in some cases. Difference of opinion and different levels of understanding are what move science forward, yet skeptics sometimes seem to forget that and insist their way is the only way, their beliefs are the only correct ones.
Changing people who live by “authority” and “going along with the crowd” is very difficult. I commend Robert for his work. Facts don’t move these people in many cases. However, someone standing up and disagreeing with the speaker can sometimes give people the little push they need to start questioning. It’s a very tough gig. It’s not standard science, it’s humans and their emotions and what they cling to as beliefs. Science alone will not convince these individuals to leave the safety of the group and stand up against CAGW. I wish it would. It would so much easier. Physical science is pretty straighforward, social science is basically a quagmire.
As usual, the only thing settled is tenure.
jclarke341 @ur momisugly October 16, 2017 8:20 am:
Socialism is not viable. It is like a plate spinning atop a long stick. . . .
Great analogy. Related: Why Do Half-Measures Work for Markets, But Not for Socialism?
There is more than enough evidence to convince anyone that AGW was a ploy to move money from rich nations to poor nations using state control. It never was about climate until that was spotted by non scientists such as Al Gore as a correlation/cause concept that would fit the bill and would fool most of the populace. Now the chickens are coming home to roost as deceit, cunning, and fraud are revealed.