Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Willie Soon – Business Green author Leo Barasi is worried people still don’t want to act to save the planet, despite the utter defeat of “climate denial”.
2017 was the year climate denial died
Leo Barasi
27 December 2017
Reality has killed climate denial – but apathy will still condemn the world to dangerous global warming unless it is confronted, argues Leo Barasi
2017 has left climate deniers with nowhere to go. Merciless hurricanes, heatwaves, floods, and droughts swept the planet all year, along with impossible-sounding fires – in icy Greenland; and in California in December. All are an early taste of what life on a hotter world would be like. Public opinion recognises the link with climate change, with international polls showing that worries about global warming are now at record levels with vanishingly few people thinking it’s a hoax.
…
Yet the climate war is far from over. While climate denial may have lost, there is another problem: climate apathy. Most people understand climate change is happening, but just don’t think about it much and don’t accept they should change their lives to deal with it. This matters because stopping dangerous climate change won’t be possible with only popular measures like replacing coal power stations with solar panels. There will have to be difficult changes too, like cutting emissions from flying and meat eating. So long as many people are apathetic, governments will avoid the hard changes that are also needed.
One long-standing reason for apathy is the way climate change often feels like a distant problem, something for polar bears and future generations. So it matters that climate change is now devastating places where emissions need to fall. Those of us who want faster action shouldn’t hold back from pointing out that this is what would become normal if emissions don’t fall.
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The death of climate denial is one of the most under-appreciated stories of 2017. When the climate deniers played their hand this year they found the world had left them behind. But climate apathy is proving more resilient than denial, and is stopping the world confronting what it will take to live up to its promise to stop dangerous warming. It will take more work to turn that apathy into action.
Read more (paywalled): https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/opinion/3023569/2017-was-the-year-climate-denial-died
I guess the kind of mind which can imagine that this year’s weather was the opening salvo of the coming climate apocalypse has no problem believing that everyone is convinced of the need for climate action, but nobody wants to act.
Wow, just amazing. In one sense, climate change de_nial IS dead, or more accurately, it never existed in the first place. No climate skeptic has ever de_nied that climate changes, or that it doesn’t ALWAYS change. That was a stupid, empty straw man created by the climate Scientologists.
But de_nial of the stupid-ass assertion that human CO2 emissions are guaranteed to cause our doom due to CAGW, well, that’s very much alive. I de_ny that CO2 “causes” CAGW, even if you want to include the naturally emitted portion. And I say this is the smart money position. I further say that more CO2 is going to create a boon for all living things on land and in the oceans. I say only idiots and greenies and crazy ideologues believe CO2 will kill off humanity. And of course, some climate Scientologists and their research university administrators along with Marxists, Progressives and Democrats will go along with the catastrophic certainty for the money and power, the trips, the prestige of jetting around the world and the cushy, public pensions.
Where do they keep managing to find so many idiots such as Leo Barasi?
Liberal arts colleges
……Journalism majors?
Jackasses R Us?
20107 was for me quite a bad year climatically, the first summer in memory I didn’t go for a swim in the ocean due to the lack of warmth.
Oh, wait….
Actually, I am finding quite the opposite viewpoint by most ‘normal’ folks recently and most definitely this week as where I am visiting for Christmas in north central Saskatchewan (the Siberia of the prairies), it has been regularly in the mid -30’s C with a -50+ wind chill. Just weather, like we had in the 1960’s or 1970’s. Like freeze your unprotected ears off in about 3-4 minutes or less. Literally. Like being flash frozen. I don’t mind a dry calm -40 so much although is a bummer in general for starting a vehicle or doing much outside. But -25 and a real strong 30-40 mph wind is like death on steroids for the human flesh. Feels like about -120 below F. Way colder than the reported wind chill factor.
I have been ‘canvasing’ people and total strangers here the the last week with an opening line such as…”So much for global warming eh?” or “don’t you just wish we would have actually got a little global warming by now?’ Not one has has brought up the CAGW meme and most mock it. Most ordinary people, like the ones that vote, privately know that there is a climate fr@ud going on since the only real evidence is that the climate has been so almost perfectly warm, stable and productive the last 150 years that 7.5 billion people have been able to successfully multiply to where we are today. People aren’t stupid.
2017 was the year that CAGW got kicked to the curb by Trump, and the evidence is how badly business green author Leo Barasi is admitting it by desperately grasping at alarmist ‘victory’ over the skeptics. Sounds like he and the alarmists are having a panic attack, as the Pause continues.
You’ve got the kind of weather that instantly freezes one’s nose hairs when they go outside!
George Carlin has resurrected in Sheri’s persona.
Let us not forget that Trump was hired by some 65,000,000 Americans to do exactly what he is doing.
As such, we all (Trump voters) have a hand in the kickin- to-the-curb.
The climate alarmists method to always win the argument: When the facts are against you, no one believes your made up facts, ad hominems don’t work, etc. … claim that you always had the views of the winning side and that is was your opponents not you that had your crazy views.
This shows the true extent of Green Blob delusion and deceit.
2017 saw precisely nothing in global weather events and patterns that hasn’t been seen many times before, so his assertion-packed ‘evidence’ is next-to worthless. There is literally NOTHING unusual occurring.
These endless assertions of ‘victory’ only serve to highlight their insecurity, borne of a growing awareness that their precious AGW theory is failing on almost all observable counts.
They’re getting very desperate, and they know it.
The only apathy I see is that of the people who know they have been defrauded of billions, lied to consistently for 30 years, had formerly trusted institutions infiltrated by CAGW leftists and eco-political mercenaries plus numerous politicians and scientists bought and sold with their taxpayer money. And have done little. Now that’s apathy.
The truth will set you free.
……Truth is that fossil fuels are finite and the day when they are noticeably being depleted and the various “renewable” “alternatives” are becoming the only alternative sources of energy will be the day when real and legitimate panic will set in globally.
The various “renewable” “alternatives” are not “alternatives” at all. Without fossil fuels, the so-called “alternatives” would not exist. Show me one wind turbine or solar panel whose raw materials were mined and transported without the use of fossil fuels, whose manufacture was accomplished without the use of fossil fuels, whose manufactured components were transported to the site where they were to be erected without fossil fuels, whose installation site was prepared (including felling of trees, excavating, pouring of foundations, etc.) without fossil fuels, whose erection on site was accomplished without fossil fuels, whose maintenance and repair is done without fossil fuels, and whose dismantling and disposal is accomplished without fossil fuels. Etc. ad nauseam.
And all of that to produce erratic, unreliable, inconsistent, non-dispatchable electric generation that requires, once again, fossil fuels to back it up and provide the REAL electric generation.
So yes, when/if fossil fuels become “depleted,” a panic SHOULD rightfully set in, if we haven’t found any ACTUAL “alternatives” (hint: NOT solar panels and wind turbines) by then. But we’re nowhere near that point for the foreseeable future, so what’s your point?
The peak cobalt, peak lithium, peak millions of tons of concrete, steel, and copper will happen long before peak oil ever does.
Voltaire
It is noticeable that those with weak arguments use imprecise terms repeatedly shortening them to the point of no meaning. So we have seen Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming become Global Warming, then Climate Change and now just ‘Climate’.
What level of idiocy afflicts someone that they feel saying do you believe in or not believe in ‘climate’ has any meaning?
There is nothing that generates more certainty that this entire tax carbon dioxide ‘pollution’ therefore close down ‘fossil fueled’ industries is a hoax of international proportions – than the unwillingness of its proponents to talk in precise terms.
Strangely, the converse is also true once tied down the proponents will move to precise maths and challenge opponents to find errors. (Adding 2 apples to 2 oranges – they will say but 2+2 = 4 doesn’t it) This is actually another attempt to avoid explaining their hypothesis in precise testable terms.
Their hypothesis is that increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration would inevitably lead to temperature increases in the Earth system leading to levels of warming that would be catastrophic (droughts and floods, seas boiling, ending up like Mars etc etc).
This is falsified by for example:
– Historic temperature and CO2 records that show temperatures dropping with far higher levels of CO2 and CO2 level changes lagging temperature changes. showing no effect of CO2 on temperatures but probable effects of temperatures on CO2 levels.
– Atmospheric wet and dry lapse rates that can be accurately generated using just the gas laws with no reference to radiative gases. (Therefore no tropospheric hot spot)
– All predictions (not heavily tuned hindcasts) made using the climate models being wrong (even when multiple wrong models are averaged in ensembles)
The refusal to accept falsifications as a reason to stop closing down industries is also an indication that the the entire ‘climate change’/’global warming’ industry is based on a hoax or being used as cover for something else.
Climate changes happen all the time. Some significant and rapid changes well before humans were available to cause them, are still unexplained. Most of them appear cyclic but not simplistically as the climate system is a non-linear chaotic system of chaotic systems. Everyone believes in climate change in a non-linear chaotic system – no-one should believe that one questionable parameter can govern that chaotic system.
Nicely put, Ian.
What we are witnessing are the last, desperate gasps of the dying Cult of Caterwauling Climate Catastrophists. People who may have cared somewhat about climate no longer do. They may not be able to admit it yet to themselves, but they were lied to, and they believed the lies. That’s on them, and brands them as weak-minded forever.
So we have finally defeated Oceania? Great news friends
It’s the old story: 4 guys (Somebody, Everybody, Anybody and Nobody) got a job to do. Everybody thinks Somebody should do it, Somebody says Anybody can do it, and in the end, as always, poor old Nobody does it!
cheers
Bahamamike
Maybe Climate Denial died because nobody claimed denial to begin with–of course, if you want the nub of the assertion, it’s that man is responsible for climate change, and that claim is just as ridiculous.
If they ever want to quit politicizing Climate Change for their nefarious purposes, people will pay attention. Until then, most people view it for what it really is–a transparent attempt to assert power through dubious if not criminal distortions.
Climate Change has been the Fake News of science for quite some time.
‘All are an early taste of what life on a hotter world would be like. Public opinion recognises the link with climate change’
Nobody else does.
‘While climate denial may have lost, there is another problem: climate apathy.’
Ah, yes, a new invented term devoid of meaning.
“one year does not climate make”
Exactly. The meaning of “climate” has been long lost to Climate Change, Inc.
It is written to mollify themselves… Overwrought rhetoric and exaggeration usually indicates a need to make themselves feel better…. even if they have to lie to themselves to do it….:)
Pay-walled echo chamber. This is what’s calling preaching to the choir.
c̶a̶l̶l̶i̶n̶g̶ called
> “2017 has left climate deniers with nowhere to go.”
Not true. While the public places are mostly clear there are still some halls of academia infested with alarmist roaches. Skeptics need to go there with brooms and sunlight. A good place to start is to vilify anyone sinking so low as to use the term denier.
> “Merciless hurricanes, heatwaves, floods, and droughts swept the planet all year, along with impossible-sounding fires – in icy Greenland; and in California in December.”
The old warmist trick. When the facts are against you; resort to assigning human characteristics to physical phenomena. Merciless indeed.
DO an internet search for “climate change” and select images, most of the images presented are fake photos, photo shopped.
Defeated sceptics? Ah no. Just taking a well deserved rest after POTUS cancelled CC ah…that’s Climate Carnival. Take a break yourself and join the cross global X-country ski relay from Dallas to India.
Nobody “denies” that climate naturally changes. What skeptics are, is critical of the Hypothesis of Anthropogenic Global Warming…. The Hypothesis of AGW has been wholly falsified and has no scientific validity. Temp precedes CO2 rise in ice cores rather than the other way round. There is no Tropical Tropospheric Hot Spot as modeled by Climate Scientists as the “fingerprint of AGW. There has been no significant warming for 20 years despite a 10 percent increase in CO2…. and then there is ClimateGate and the Emails that show the unconscionable conduct and corruption of the Climate Science cabal.
Hyperbole and exaggeration isn’t going to change any facts… or the climate.
Climate Denial was dead when the phrase was invented and applied to an inanimate straw man. That straw man was never living but was beaten daily by the political establishment cheerleaders of the world, who can’t seem to understand the complete failure of command control economies throughout the history of this world. These global government cheerleaders still reject the notion that free people doing what is in their own best interest is the only stable long term solution to the advancement of the human race. We enjoy the ability to move the human race forward, because we don’t spend the majority of our time providing the basics of life for ourselves. Most of us do productive work with the blessing of time that our ancestors bestowed upon us. A small minority of political hacks and media moguls dream of putting Liberty for the common man back into the prison of government control of ownership of the means to production. Those hacks and moguls have a large megaphone, but have sounded the alarm so many times most people ignore it. And when you lose credibility on one issue, all of their statements are now suspect.
Here, let me put this new strategy in Month Python terms:
“Would it help to confuse it if we run away more?”
So I am ignorant and apathetic? I don’t know and I don’t care.
lol
2018 is yet another year Leo Barasi hopes to pay his mortgage writing about hot spurting global warming.
Honestly – I don’t have a huge problem with people making up their own reality… until they force me to live their fantasies too.
And that’s Progressivism all over.