I had a Facebook discussion with Dr. Roy Spencer this morning, because he wrote a note about only having one trick-or-treater show up at the door of his home this year. I quipped:
“I blame global warming.” to which he wryly replied: “You can’t go out tonight kids because it’s almost 1 degree warmer than when your great-grandparents went trick-or-treating!”.
Chuckling, I replied: “surely somewhere, that argument has been made. That “climate change” will affect Halloween. Here, the EDF using the holiday as an excuse to write a scare story: http://blogs.edf.org/…/a-real-halloween-horror-story…/
Without getting into the details, here is their claims, the only one of which has any truth is #5, but would be better served by saying “don’t believe” rather than “deny”, as in 58% of Americans don’t believe in ghosts.
- Extreme weather is becoming more extreme
- Tipping points loom in near future
- Coastal communities battle sea level rise
- Humans are nearing uncharted climate territory
- Many American politicians deny the problem
And the EDF doesn’t stop there, they produced a series of posters for teachers to put up in the classroom:
Indeed, and that wasn’t the only example of climate zealots trying to co-opt Halloween for a climate agenda, I found many others:
- Scary Climate Change Facts to Haunt your Halloween
- Does Halloween Candy Contribute to Climate Change And Destroy the Environment?
- A common ingredient in Halloween candy is contributing to climate change
- Groups’ Halloween Message to Ducey: Climate Change is Scary
- These 3 climate change Halloween costumes will make you the biggest jerk at the party.
- Four of the Scariest Things About Climate Change
- Climate change is scary enough for Halloween
- Samantha Bee’s Halloween Climate Change Spooktacular (video)
As Dr. Roy quipped in his final Facebook comment, when it comes to climate change zealotry “Never let a good holiday go to waste.”
Their claims are scary but as real as the ghosts and goblins.
this is the first halloween i remember that was a celebration of sensitivity, too.
seems the most popular costume was SJW.in.Angst.Mode
Nice posters though and very well thought out as each poster clearly contains 3 myths that people still believe in.
I’ve experienced several ghosts. Pick another bogeyman 😛
Data point!
I am casually collecting personal ghost-experience anecdotes and personal ball-lightning-experience anecdotes. Neither phenomenon has a satisfactory explanatory theory (the Dean of lightning studies at Florida University once said, in a talk I attended: “Leave out any one trait of ball lightning — for example, the fact that it doesn’t fade over time — and we have a theory to explain what’s left, but there is no theory that accounts for ALL of them together”).
So far I’ve got 12/twelve personal ghost experiences, and 3/three for ball lightning.
It just amuses the snot out of me that we don’t believe in ghosts for lack of a theory to account for them but we do believe in ball lightning even though it suffers the same lack, while the number of claimed experiences for the one significantly overwhelms the number for the other.
We’re weird.
Mellryn
Just in case you haven’t come across it, can I recommend an excellent little book to you about ball lightning : The Taming of the Thunderbolts by C.Maxwell Cade and Delphine Davis.
It is full of case histories and a fascinating read. Printed 1969 but you can probably easily get one from the excellent Abebooks.com website.
ClimateOtter
According to one visitor to our 20 year old house, we have a resident ghost. The guy was a Commander in the Royal Navy and described his nocturnal visitation by a woman as peaceful and reassuring.
That should be 200 year old house!
Scary that the climate change zealots are able to direct their propaganda at defenseless children. They won’t debate knowledgeable experts because they know climate change “facts” are not fit for purpose, but they have no scruples about baldfaced lies directed at our children, in order to fulfill their own political and ideological ambitions.
I’m no brain trust, but successfully kicked over about 85% of what I was taught before the age of 15. Give today’s kids more credit.
“… they have no scruples about baldfaced lies directed at our children, in order to fulfill their own political and ideological ambitions.”
This is true of zealots everywhere and is in no way restricted to climate change advocacy. When you KNOW you are right all methods of achieving your objective are morally justifiable.
There is another, smaller, class of conscious liars (neglecting, for the moment, those who lie from circumstantial necessity): the cynical, amoral operators who will say and do anything to secure an advantage. These latter individuals are largely concentrated in highly political areas.
If any reasonably educated member of the public or influential policymaker or reporter was to read the following statement …..
“Our organization does not conduct any research nor does it monitor ghost related data or parameters. Its role is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the latest scientific, technical and socio-economic literature produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of the risk of ghost proliferation, its observed and projected impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.”
….. it’s more or less of a certainty that they’d say “Wait a minute – prove that ghosts exist before continuing with this garbage you’re doing.”
But make the following substitutions of “The IPCC”, “climate”, and “human-induced climate change” in the obvious places ( https://archive.is/B6NVS ), and you see what is wrong with the people in the mainstream media who are supposed to be viewing the issue as critical thinkers and objectively report about all aspects of it.
Last night as I took my daughter around, one older woman giving out candy commented that she usually had to wear gloves when she gave out candy but this year she didn’t have to. Despite the fact that it was still a chilly evening, my daughter, playing on the theme asked her why she thought it was warmer. “Climate Change” was the response and my daughter burst out laughing — irritating the woman. Fortunately we had already gotten our candy and we could walk away chuckling without fear that our treats were not “adjusted” like the surface temperature data.
I can remember most distinctly a Halloween afternoon in the mid 1970’s in Connecticut that was in the sultry 70’s, with green grass and many leaves still on the trees. Kids have only to ask their parents and grandparents (assuming they haven’t sprung from a petri dish) what the weather was like years ago and they’ll sleep just fine without worrying about the AGW boogeyman.
When I was a kid trick or treating back in the previous century, I distinctly remember one Halloween when the snow was ankle deep, and another when it was so warm I was sweating under my plastic mask & costume. Variable weather was something that happened, not something to be feared.
Ya know there’s nothing wrong with just responding “Climate Change”, it’s Anthro/Human caused Climate Change which is laughable.
Please to remind daughter and enjoy the treats!
Lol didn’t happen here (mid Maine) due to no power since 0845 monday morning. Man gas can get costly when feeding a generator
150$ US for 4 days of gas. below freezing nights what really ate into it.
I had to google EDF. Environmental Defense Fund. “Finding the ways that work.” Not this way.
There is a market for scary stories, and unethical marketers of those stories. Environmental Defense Fund is one of those, and about the stories are about as real as werewolves and Bigfoot.
Werewolves and Bigfoot and “obesity.” You forgot “obesity.” 😉
oh my
We only had 55 trick-or-treaters this year — vs about 76 last year (yes, I keep track). Warming certainly wasn’t the problem. Here in Colorado Springs, it was downright cold last night — and we had snow the night before. OT — as an experiment this year, I offered four types of candy (M&Ms with peanuts, M&M plain, M&M caramel, and KitKat) in a large bowl, and instructed each kid to pick one of their choosing. To my surprise, the selections were about evenly divided — and many of them verbally expressed their preference for one type or another.
I had purchased a bag of bite-sized Butterfingers. We had no Trick or Treater’s. Now I must figure out what to do with the candy. Life is full of challenges and decisions.
My address is …
I always buy just my favorite candies just in case…..And, by the way, Butterfinger and Baby Ruth bars are both among my favorites.
Obviously AGW affects birth rates…
We got the fewest “trick or treaters” this year than we have had in the recent years because it was too cold in Michigan.
It was snowing here in the UP during trick r treat.
Looks like a great Halloween game: Hey kids, see if you can spot the big scary climate lie hidden amongst the myths, fables, and fairy tales!
Three posters each containing three myths that gullible people still believe in
Those posters each seem to just list three silly legends believed by fools.
The rain and cooler temperatures kept most of the trick or treaters inside in my area.
Halloween is a great time to check whether the climate has really changed or whether the records are just being changed.
We were all kids once, out there in the chilly evening air. Even as adults, we remember taking out kids out or just note what the weather is like for whatever reason.
There is NO change in the Halloween weather. If it supposed to be so much warmer, nobody notices.
Where I live, the first snowfall usually happens right around Halloween. Yup, 1 inch last night.
Same here. Very typical of Alberta.
A local Milwaukee TV station said this was the coldest Halloween in 20 years!
See? It’s Climate Change! ;-p
You can see why “Climate change” has taken over from “S@4$ happens” expression. The activists have got the messaging so mixed up now that it has become it’s own joke.
I am now envisioning the movie Predator 2, with every utterance of “sh– happens” replaced with “climate change”. Most amusing.
It is ironic that Halloween was in part, an ancient celebration of death, as represented by the decline of sunlight hours (at least in the NH) and annual weather turning cold to the point of representing death because a cold climate does not sustain any growth of life. Most plant life goes into suspended animation until spring, and animal (human too) life is a battle for survival in a cold world. You would think modern humans would celebrate any possible global warming, as life did itself in any past historical warming period. Cold and darkness is death, and warmth and light are life. Let’s celebrate the warmth while it lasts, because cold is always lurking around the corner, either every fall, or any unforeseen incident that causes massive global cooling. Now that would be extremely scary.
You’ve hit on a major elephant in the room, Earthling2. Because of increasing urbanization, the vast mass of humanity is now nearly COMPLETELY divorced from any direct experience of “Nature.” Fighting for survival in the cold is 100 years plus removed from the experience of those in most advantaged, industrial countries. Most people don’t have the vaguest idea of our dependency on plants and animals, and therefore CO2, to even survive. They think this stuff arrives magically shrink-wrapped and bar-coded on their countertop, and some corporate entity in the sky keeps their lights on, their water hot in the shower and their apartment climate-controlled. I’d guess less than 2% of the population would be capable of performing knowledgeably and effectively today in any kind of primitive survival situation.
They also lack even the most basic biological understanding of the human body, hence the raft of outlandish “miracle cures” out there lacking any remote semblance of biological plausibility, yet which rake in millions.
That was absolutely a fantastic comment! Nail on Head et al.
The urbanized swarm is only remotely interacting with the environment.
Their world view is driving us into oblivion.
Yirgach
It is the phenomenon of the majority dictated to by the minority. ‘Green ‘ city dwellers telling rural people how they should operate, with no knowledge of the rural environment whatsoever.
Immigrant minorities given exclusive protection in order that the indigenous population don’t discriminate against them while some of their members routinely plot to, and all too often, succeed in terrorising our streets.
We are not allowed to use ‘derogatory’ terms to describe them for fear of being singled out for hate speech prosecution, but its quite in order for them to call me a ‘Jock’ or a ‘Sweaty Sock’ (slang for Scot, for the uninitiated) Australians being routinely referred to as ‘Convicts’, American white skinned people described as ‘Honky’s’ and the Chinese, resident or not, enjoying the term Gweilo for Westerners. I’m sure there are numerous other derogatory terms for white Christians across the world.
So much for freedom of speech, it only applies if one is a member of a minority group these days.
My trick-or-treaters #’s were down substantially this year too. Maybe only half of expectation from previous years. I blame the mid-week date. Maybe the World Series game 6 was also a factor. My last one group of two kids with a parent showed up 30 minutes after the game was over and a full hour after the previous group.
The weather was perfect in Tucson last night.
The one post mentions 400,000 atomic bombs.
Given that children and most adults have not experienced an atomic bomb, this comparison has little meaning. They need a new metric:
43.2 bezillion birthday candles;
883.4 gazillion pieces of camel dung;
33.3 years of the energy of the alcohol of EU wine production;
1 googol of medium sized Pumpkins
I googled Medium Sized Pumpkin once and got all kinds of weird hits
I think you forgot Kitten Sneezes!
Seems like a legit list of facts there, owls swooping down to steal your soul and scawy global warming stories belong on the same list of “facts”.
Just wait until the climate caterwaulers get their mitts on Christmas.
It’s more likely that in the future kids won’t know what rigorous science is rather than not know what snow is.
Perhaps in the future kids will grow up knowing (at least if told by their parents) that science is just as fallible, just as spun by special interests, just as tailored to fit the needs of the powerful as religions have been since always. In fact, “science” as used today resembles nothing so much as one more convenient “religion” devoted to herding the sheep in whatever direction the overlords wish them to roam.
Goldrider
It’s my opinion that there’s too much emphasis on science these days. Almost anything can be scientifically investigated, no matter how inconsequential, and frequently badly so. Witness all the daft papers produced on obscure subjects, feasting at the table of climate change for credibility. Many of them not classic science, but social or ‘humanistic’
Our PM of the time, Tony Blair chanted “Education, Education, Education” in 1997 and vowed to have 50% of school leavers reach University. That spawned a raft of ridiculous University courses and qualifications, and a generation of unemployed graduates, with degrees considered useless in any meaningful working environment, saddled with student loans they will never repay. What an utter financial and social mess the taxpayer is forced to shoulder, once again, at the hands of a socialist government we are still clearing up after, 7 years after its defeat by the Conservatives. I’ll ignore the financial mess they plunged the country into.
Science is tough, including the classics such as English, History etc. so achieving a meaningful qualification should also be extremely tough. We want the best minds working on our scientific problems, not the mediocre.
I wonder if the Chinese or Indians are as keen on social sciences as the western world is. Somehow, I doubt it. Yet we delude ourselves that an expensive education, for the sake of an education, is meaningful.
Socialist governments routinely put the cart before the horse thanks to their ideological zeal. Instead of responding to the demand of society for educated graduates, Blair thought over educating people would stimulate the economy, instead, it has blighted it. University graduates routinely working full time in McDonald’s and Uber, what an effing waste, and in large part, responsible for the Gig economy.
I dressed as a “Climate Change Refugee”. I wore shorts, flip flops, sunglasses and a tee shirt that said “Florida” on it. Most guessed “tourist” but no one got it correct. After being told what I was, they looked a little confused and several asked “What the hell is that?”
Well done sir
After years of searching, we have finally found one.
I bow to you
You should have recruited 9,999,999 others to appear convincing.
Of all of environmental groups pushing the CC hustle, EDF is possibly staffed with some of the better actual scientists.
GreenPeace, NRDC, and WWF are mostly carnival barkers, and thoroughly willing to undertake any scheme or artifice necessary to further their cause.
EDF at least employs people like solid researchers like Monika J. Barcikowska, PhD.
Her latest paper, “Observed and Simulated Fingerprints of Multidecadal Climate Variability and Their Contributions to Periods of Global SST Stagnation”, available here:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0443.1
That manuscript, though model-based, at least acknowledges a recent global SST “stagnation” and the implications of a 65 yr AMO cycle means that a coming “cold North Atlantic phase with possible implications for near-term global temperature evolution.”
That is an acknowledgment of strong internal climate variability is trumping the CO2 control knob hypothesis without coming right out and saying it.
Another notable employee of EDF is Steve Cochran. Though a hard-core Louisiana Democrat, his recent career work has been devoted to restoring the Mississippi Delta ecosystems disrupted by decades of growth and human impacts. His push for funding for the M Delta resilience programs is noteworthy. The Delta is sinking, communities are suffering for it, and ecosystems are being inundated, and it has nothing to do with CO2.
Still though, like all the employees of these PC environmental groups, no one (who wants to remain employed) can have the academic freedom to critically challenge the Climate Change “CO2 is the demon” theme. There are critically important environmental issues that should be addressed by federal funding and research, but the whole “CO2 is the problem” is a disastrous politicized distraction for the real environmental issues.
Actual scientists, schcientists. There is nothing scarier than the dangerous effects of climate change. (The dangerous effects are products of a fertile imagination. A good horror.)
“the whole “CO2 is the problem” is a disastrous politicized distraction for the real environmental issues.”
But harping on i6t is what brings in the donations. OTOH, a “push for funding for the M Delta resilience programs” would bring in hardly any.
Cannot think of a better initiative for developing healthy, society-wide skepticism against baseless horror stories.
Trick-or-treaters masquerading as alarmist climate scientists: GIVE US THE CANDY!
+97
Wish I had seen/thought of this a few days ago to use as a costume for tricking or treating with the grand kids last night. Would have bought an Al Gore mask and taped paper money to the outside of my jacket(it was unseasonably chilly here in S.Indiana).
Holding a sign, saying: “Help stop global warming, give me your money!”
OR: “I trick you on climate change, you treat me with money!
https://www.amazon.com/Rubies-Costume-Mens-Gore-Multicoloured/dp/B003XC1V14
https://propmoneys.com/?gclid=Cj0KCQjw4eXPBRCtARIsADvOjY3WZU6DDiCLfZ_HJuO1uWq-l_3x-OUYr5p9upZRtVzkD3AXaUAr30EaAnzxEALw_wcB
Interesting, … yesterday, I was just looking at those cartoon Halloween graphics that EDF used in its scare posters.
Yes, we know where you get your science from. !
I was referring to the graphics that serve as backgrounds, … JUST the pictures, … NOT the words — they come from a well-known vector graphics website. EDF probably downloaded them from that site, and then one of their interns added the words in a photo editor to create the posters.
The most dominant element on the EDF website is a window top-left asking for contributions that takes up about half the screen.
Non-commercial, eh ? … Okay, if they say so.
Well, you can’t get much more shamelessly blatant than that.
This is one my mother taught me, from her childhood.
From goulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night
Good Lord, deliver us!
http://www.darklanecreative.com/blog/ghoulies-ghosties-and-long-leggety-beasties
Here in the United States we are getting ready for Winter
having just survived the Halloween Climate Change tie-ins
gearing up for a round of Veterans Day Climate Change tie-ins
Thanksgiving is going to be an Arctic blast of guilt
But Trump will give us an extra lump of coal to burn for Christmas
it’s going to be a long one.
Hocus Locus
More than you would have got from Clinton. She would have had her minions hiding round the corner to take the kids candy as they returned from a house visit.
Trick or treat at Halloween is something we older Brits resent as an American import.
We always had the routine of children visiting neighbours houses for treats, but they had to be earned. Every child was expected to, and enjoyed, singing a song, doing a dance, reciting a poem or telling a story before their reward. The concept of a trick was never considered but nowadays they include putting nasty things through letter boxes and hurling eggs at houses.
But if you ever want a legitimately creepy Halloween experience, read Tam o’ Shanter, then go and visit Ayr, in Scotland where the tree lined road Tam staggered down (drunk) during a stormy night, remains, as does the restored, derelict Church (Alloway Kirk) where witches, warlocks, and the devil (playing the bagpipes) were dancing in the derelict Church; and the bridge over the river Doon he escaped from her clutches over, on his horse Meg (Maggie) who lost her tail to the witches. Witches can’t cross running water but managed to grab Meg’s tail before she passed the keystone, which is still there.
Whilst watching the witches dancing like dervishes in the Church graveyard, Tam was swept up in the moment, and beguiled by an attractive young witch, rashly exclaim `Weel done, cutty-sark!’ (cutty-sark = “short shirt”) at which point, the chase began.
The tea Clipper, Cutty Sark, built on the river Clyde and once the fastest ship in the world, and now a museum in Greenwich, London, was named so, after the dress the attractive witch was wearing that fateful night. The figurehead of the Cutty Sark is the witch, Nannie Dee, clutching Meg’s tail in her outstretched hand.
Of course the whole thing was a tall tale Tam concocted for his wife, to cover up for him losing a bet and Meg’s tail being taken as payment.
Tam o’Shanter, the illustrated audio version, you’ll barely understand a word but it’s easy to follow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkiZbpd9stw
This version includes a verse removed by Burns at the request of a friend. It seems opinions then were much as they are now.
“Three lawyers’ tongues, turn’d inside out,
Wi’ lies seam’d like a beggar’s clout;
Three priests’ hearts, rotten black as muck,
Lay stinking, vile in every neuk.”
Cutty Sark, the ship: http://www.carolinegurney.com/uploads/6/1/1/7/6117037/descendants_of_cutty_sark_24_may_2012.pdf
Enjoy.
PS
The Auld Kirk: https://www.google.com/maps/place/55°25'40.5“N+4°38’15.1″W/@55.4276566,-4.6384446,443a,35y,3.31t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d55.427911!4d-4.63754?hl=en