Liberal Media Angst: “if I banged on about nothing but global warming … our readers would soon lose interest”

Bryon Bay, NSW from Cape Byron State Conservation Park
Bryon Bay, NSW from Cape Byron State Conservation Park. By Travis.Thurston – Photo, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

A MSM reporter shares his guilt at having to make excuses to the Byron Bay Writer’s Festival for not doing enough to promote climate concern.

The biggest mistake we’ve made on climate change

By ROSS GITTINS

29 May 2018 — 12:14pm

Every time I go to the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival I’m asked the same question: since there’s no policy issue more important than responding to global warming, and we’re doing so little about it, why do I ever write about anything else?

I give the obvious answer. Though I readily agree that climate change is the most pressing economic problem we face, if I banged on about nothing but global warming three times a week, our readers would soon lose interest.

But even as I make my excuses, my Salvo-trained conscience tells me they’re not good enough. Even if I can’t write about it every week, I should raise it more often than I do.

Our grandchildren will find it hard to believe we could have been so short-sighted as to delay moving from having to dig our energy out of the ground to merely harnessing the infinite supply of solar and wind power being sent to our planet free of charge.

What were we thinking? Did an earlier generation delay moving from the horse and buggy to the motor car because of the disruption it would cause to the horse industry?

The biggest mistake we’ve made is to allow our politicians to turn concern about global warming into a party-political issue, and do so merely for their own short-term advantage.

Apparently, only socialists think their grandkids will have anything to worry about. The right-thinkers among us know the only bad thing our offspring will inherit is Labor’s debt.

Read more: https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-biggest-mistake-we-ve-made-on-climate-change-20180529-p4zi3h.html

I found this apologia interesting on a number of levels.

Greens are well and truly losing the battle for hearts and minds. Most of the right lost interest long ago, but reporters like Ross Gittins realise even their mainly left wing audiences have priorities other than receiving updates about how doomed we are.

Gittins himself in my opinion admits that he is embracing expediency over green purity, he feels guilty about “not doing more”, but this vague sense of guilt does not translate into an imperative for him to change his own behaviour.

If this failure continues, soon even holdout groups like the Byron Bay Writer’s Festival will give up. They may pay a little lip service, the way left wing bourgeoise of today lift a glass of expensive champagne to toast Karl Marx, but in a few years the age of climate concern will be well and truly dead.

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R. Shearer
June 3, 2018 5:03 pm

That picture doesn’t look like winter?

R. Shearer
Reply to  Eric Worrall
June 3, 2018 6:06 pm

Sounds nice, I hope to visit someday.

raybees444
Reply to  R. Shearer
June 3, 2018 6:23 pm

Byron is a beautiful place, but to visit now, you have to put up with a large number of scruffy persons, to whom bathing seems to be a foreign idea they don’t support.

Reply to  raybees444
June 3, 2018 6:56 pm

You of course mean ‘ferals’. The truth will set you free.😁

Hivemind
Reply to  raybees444
June 3, 2018 8:17 pm

“scruffy persons”

Hey, they prefer to be called by their proper name, “Oiks”, if you’re being casual. Or “Bogans” if you want to be polite.

Craig from Oz
Reply to  Hivemind
June 4, 2018 7:14 pm

Bogan is incorrect.

Bogans are a class of lower soco-economical who tend to like drinking tinned beer, doing burn outs, going to the footy and listening to 80s rock. Dress code is the flannelette shirt and common names include Dazza and Shazza.

The more motived bogan may evolve into a self employed tradie but most tend to be on the lower ends of the job markets doing semi skilled or manual type labour. They can be crude but still want the best for their families and are basically harmless.

ozspeaksup
Reply to  raybees444
June 4, 2018 3:02 am

bear in mind the feral/scruffies are probably long term residents who moved there in the 60/70s when none of the yuppies would have bothered going there. now its like many gentrified yuppie over run over priced resorts.
and original owners stunningly hand built mud n strawbale homes are now fetching mega mill at sale btw;-)
poetic really

Ozonebust
June 3, 2018 5:07 pm

I remember the days when Ross Gittens was an astute journalist.
He was one of my favourite reads. If he is so wrong on this issue, what other subjects has he failed to report accurately.
Regards

miniTAX
Reply to  Ozonebust
June 4, 2018 5:28 am

Leftists like Gittens have always been wrong. It’s just you who become right.

wws
Reply to  Ozonebust
June 4, 2018 11:27 am

This story makes sense if you consider someone like Gittens writing in a different era, say a hundred years ago. He would have said “I agree that saving souls from eternal damnation is the most vitally important issue of our day, but if I wrote about nothing but that 3 times a week I would probably lose most of my readers.”

The dedication to “Climate Change” is now a completely religious one. And as with one religion, the True Believers will always consider their Dogma to be more Important than anything else in the world,

Reply to  Ozonebust
June 4, 2018 1:20 pm

If he is so wrong on this issue, what other subjects has he failed to report accurately.

So often I see people with extensive knowledge about a subject pointing out the lousy, often factually incorrect, reporting on the topic they know about, yet they blindly accept what the same reporter tells them about everything else. For some reason, what you said never occurs to them.

When you point it out, they have a brief moment of realization “Yeah, I never thought about that”, then go right back to accepting what they’re fed unquestioningly.

I never could understand it.

Thomho
Reply to  Ozonebust
June 4, 2018 11:30 pm

Once upon a time I liked Gittins’ work too, but nowadays I hold him in disdain because he is playing to the inner city green left by bagging economics ( in which he is trained) bagging the coalition conservative government and virtue signalling about climate change
On the latter my guess is he would be hard pressed to explain the theory supporting it

Tom Halla
June 3, 2018 5:11 pm

When the cult dies down, a nasty residue will remain. Proposition 65 in California is the residue of Nixon’s War on Cancer, and the notions behind that episode. No matter how well discredited, some True Believers will remain, like those holdout Japanese soldiers still hiding out decades after the surrender.

schitzree
Reply to  Tom Halla
June 4, 2018 12:40 am

This post contains thoughts known to the state of California to cause cancer or reproductive harm.

<¿<

Phil Rae
June 3, 2018 5:24 pm

Yes! The worm may have turned, as they say, but it will take a long time before we get out of this mess caused by climate change hysteria. Too many vested interests, rent seekers & government taxes at stake for it to all blow over anytime soon, unfortunately.

Sommer
Reply to  Phil Rae
June 4, 2018 8:43 am
June 3, 2018 5:27 pm

Feeling morally superior is all that matters to many. It is a great approach as it fits in to their 5 minute attention span on any subject. Actually doing something takes learning over a period of years, which very few (1%) commit to. There is also an interesting equivalency of feelings to science data. When someone argues about geology, they revert to calling me a troll when they have no science argument to make. This is totally equivalent to them. Superiority substitutes for knowledge. That is, most engage in vacuous thinking.

Alan Tomalty
June 3, 2018 5:35 pm

40 million people in the world die every year from using biomass to cook their meals because 2.5 billion cook with biomass. What is biomass? wood, charcoal, grasses,dung …. etc They have no other choice. China is helping to build coal plants in some of these countries because they want to sell coal. We could be helping to build liquified petoleum gas(LPG) plants in those countries. The economics are about the same between coal and LPG. LPG is a mixture of propane and butane. Both come from natural gas of which the world now has 190 trillion cubic metres in proven reserves which is good for at least 50 more years. However natural gas is always being found. The only reason we arent finding any more is we arent looking very much because the prices have drastically dropped. The world also has 50 years worth of oil in proven reserves. I predict we will never run out of either one. Whenever the reserves shrink the price goes up and we look for more and find it. Coal is even in better shape. We have 153 years worth of proven reserves.

Our Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wants to impose a $35 billion carbon tax in the next 5 years in Canada to lower the world’s temperature in a 100 years time by 0.005C His most trusted advisor Gerald Betts wants every fossil fuel plant in the world to be shut down. 80% of the worlds energy comes from fossil fuels. With attitudes like Trudeau, Betts and all the other greenies they have the blood of 40 million people on their hands because instead of spending a $ trillion per year fighting a hoax like climate change the money should be spent helping those 2.5 billion people.

CD in Wisconsin
Reply to  Alan Tomalty
June 3, 2018 7:18 pm

Alan:

I see that the Canadian govt is going to buy the controversial Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion from Alberta to the west coast to ensure that the project goes through to completion. Apparently, Canada can get a better price for the oil in the Asian markets than they can here in the U.S.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/29/canada-kinder-morgan-pipeline-trans-mountain.

When Bill McKibben received the news, he issued an anti-Trudeau rant on The Guardian’s website about it (not the link above). I wish I could find it now because it was rather fun to read. Trudeau is a climate change hero one minute, and the next minute he isn’t. ROTFLMAO.

A multi-billion dollar tax on carbon on one hand, and nationalizing the KM pipeline to ensure its completion on the other. I don’t think I can recall seeing any govt or politician playing both sides of the fence quite like PM Trudeau does on climate and energy. At least not in recent memory. Trudeau should ride that fence like he would a horse…giddyup cowboy.

Alan Tomalty
Reply to  CD in Wisconsin
June 3, 2018 8:34 pm

The only reason that Canada couldnt get a better price was we were forced to sell to US because the Quebecors wouldnt let another pipeline run east and BC and Trudeau nixed a previous pipelne running west. Canada is losing 15 billion a year from being forced to sell to US. If Trudeau wouldnt have forced this pipeline through to BC ( i just told you he nixed a previous pipeline running to BC) the country would have broke up. Alberta and BC are at war. luckily each one doesnt have any armed forces. We are living in a Land of OZ up here. The Wizard is in charge and Toto hasnt learned the trick yet of pulling back the curtain.

Alan Tomalty
Reply to  CD in Wisconsin
June 3, 2018 9:15 pm

“Cleaning up the tar sands complex in Alberta – the biggest, ugliest scar on the surface of the earth – is already estimated to cost more than the total revenues generated by all the oil that’s come out of the ground. ”

The above quote from the above link to the Guardian newspaper IS ONE TOTAL LIE.
The oil sands before getting dug up are a landscape that isnt pretty but it is natural landscape. The Canadian regulations force the oil companies to turn any ground that they dig up into a grassy landscape so that the ground after the oil is dug up looks better than it was when before the oil companies 1st looked at the site. If this cost was more than the oil profit the companies wouldnt do it.

drednicolson
Reply to  CD in Wisconsin
June 3, 2018 10:30 pm

Even Truedolt can see the writing on the wall, if he looks long and close enough.

Jones
June 3, 2018 5:43 pm

“the way left wing bourgeoise of today lift a glass of expensive champagne to toast Karl Marx”

Superbly put. I will use this phrase or similar in the future.

John Garrett
June 3, 2018 5:46 pm

I’ll believe it when NPR shuts up about it.

Not a day passes without a climate story.

George Daddis
June 3, 2018 5:49 pm

If this is the level of Ross’s logic, then he should give up writing to influence his readers:

…..moving from having to dig our energy out of the ground to merely harnessing the infinite supply of solar and wind power being sent to our planet free of charge.

Coal and oil, while in the ground, are also “free of charge”. It is the cost of getting them out and to generating plants that is important.
Of course similarly, “harnessing” that “free” wind and solar makes up the cost of those energy sources, which today (and until a miracle occurs) are significantly more costly than fossil fuels. (And not necessarily more environmentally friendly.)

drednicolson
Reply to  George Daddis
June 3, 2018 10:36 pm

What is coal and oil but sequestered solar energy from a really long time ago?

Reply to  George Daddis
June 3, 2018 11:02 pm

That paragraph also caught my eye as the writer seems to think that wind and solar generators appear by magic with no mining of materials required.

They still made from concrete, steel, CARBON fibre, rare earths, copper, aluminium, glass reinforced plastic, oil, grease, etc, etc, etc plus very large road vehicles to transport them.

There are not enough unicorns in the world for their f@rts to produce all of this without mining and fossil fuels.

June 3, 2018 5:50 pm

Our grandchildren will find it hard to believe we could have been so short-sighted

At least he anticipates having grandchildren. It makes him almost a lukewarmer. Some of his fellow warmists are predicting the end of all life on earth, once we pass the dreaded tipping point.

Greg Williams
Reply to  Smart Rock
June 3, 2018 7:42 pm

More likely our grandchildren will find it hard to believe that the world fell for a hoax.

Hugs
Reply to  Greg Williams
June 3, 2018 10:22 pm

Hysteria. Wind power plants are ho-axish, but the usual Guardian style tatter is just hysteria.

AussieBear
Reply to  Greg Williams
June 4, 2018 1:49 am

+10

John Endicott
Reply to  Greg Williams
June 4, 2018 9:44 am

Indeed Greg, and his grandchildren will be extremely embarrassed of their grandfather in regards to all this.

Alan Tomalty
Reply to  Smart Rock
June 3, 2018 9:18 pm

Can you remind me again when the tipping point is? I want to book my flight on Elon Musk’s rocketship to Mars the day before the tipping point.

LdB
Reply to  Alan Tomalty
June 3, 2018 11:40 pm

According to some politicians like Hank Johnson it’s when too many of your people walk to the same side of your country and over she goes.

MarkW
Reply to  LdB
June 4, 2018 6:47 am

All the nuts have rolled to California.
Is the US in danger of capsizing?

J Mac
June 3, 2018 5:53 pm

Gads! What are these gits on about? They can write and publish anything they want. But if they write beyond-bad science fiction drivel and call it ‘climate truth’, only a narrow segment of readers are gullible enough to continue following them. This should be the subject of a required session for all attending the Byrons Bay Writers Festival!

Craig from Oz
June 3, 2018 5:57 pm

Just as a bit of background for those in other parts of the world, Byron is either the unofficial centre of alt culture and getting in touch with the inner beauty of a carbon neutral world through peace love and understanding, or filled with sandal wearing unwashed druggies, or both.

Like the general surrounding area it is a rather attractive and pleasant part of Oz, but seriously Left. Fortunately not the inner city ‘smash the state’ level of Left with their barely hidden levels of factional infighting, but probably not the sort of place you want to let slip that you are pro-fracking.

As for the actual festival, the fact that one of the guest speakers is a newspaper columnist rather than say… oh I don’t know, a NOVELIST, probably suggests just how woke the entire event is. Writers of popular fiction, conservatives or, gaia have mercy, a conservative writer of popular fiction are usually not invited.

R. Shearer
Reply to  Craig from Oz
June 3, 2018 6:14 pm

I heard they have great Elvis impersonators there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiSyBBbC7TE

shortie of Greenbank
Reply to  Craig from Oz
June 3, 2018 10:27 pm

Byron is also home of the anti-vaccers. Byron has high incidence of whooping cough and measles which has otherwise been quashed.

The higher class version of Byron would be Noosa and it too has high incidence of both as well.

ozspeaksup
Reply to  shortie of Greenbank
June 4, 2018 3:09 am

thing is?
you get whooping cough or measles naturally and you do NOT get them again..i got the vaccine and also got whooping cough 5 yrs ago (mutated version thats now around from the stronger bug thanks to vax)
and any measles outbreaks now are likely the mutated version FROM the damned vaccine which puts me at risk of getting them again at an advanced age also

Yirgach
Reply to  ozspeaksup
June 4, 2018 7:09 am

How very odd. Could you please explain how a bacteria or a virus could mutate from a vaccine which contains no living bacteria or virus?

afonzarelli
June 3, 2018 5:58 pm

test

Clay Sanborn
June 3, 2018 5:58 pm

Talking about writers, Michael Crichton was a writer that maybe Ross Gittins has heard. Even though he had no dog in the fight, Crichton argued against the Global warming madness pretty much until his death.
https://thinkprogress.org/michael-crichton-worlds-most-famous-global-warming-denier-dies-147caec78b70/

Clay Sanborn
Reply to  Clay Sanborn
June 3, 2018 6:06 pm

Oops, the link I included is a liberal’s viewpoint of Crichton; naturally they diss him. Nonetheless, it does demonstrate how the left hated him for his sage views of AGW.

Hugs
Reply to  Clay Sanborn
June 3, 2018 10:29 pm

‘liberal’ viewpoint indeed.

TA
June 3, 2018 5:58 pm

From the article: “Our grandchildren will find it hard to believe we could have been so short-sighted as to delay moving from having to dig our energy out of the ground to merely harnessing the infinite supply of solar and wind power being sent to our planet free of charge.”

It sounds so simple. I guess he doesn’t realize that “free” solar and wind are causing electricity rates to increase all over the world. It’s not really as simple as it seems. Would that it were.

Paul Schnurr
June 3, 2018 6:07 pm

Try producing the infinite amount of plastics and other hydrocarbon resins we depend on from the “infinite supply of solar and wind power being sent to our planet free of charge”.

ozspeaksup
Reply to  Paul Schnurr
June 4, 2018 3:13 am

Im delighting in asking people how often theyre on the rood cleaning their solar panels?
and are they aware that theyre NOT at all recyclable apart from the metal supports n edge stripping
fun to see their faces as i point out their panels are operating at WAY below the bragged about output if theyre the smallest amount dust n mudcovered as happens in cities- n rural especially

John Bell
June 3, 2018 6:09 pm

There is a math curve to such things as belief in CAGW, it quickly rose to 1/2 and then it slowly fades to 0, it will die out, after lots of wailing and gnashing of liberal teeth.

John Bell
June 3, 2018 6:11 pm

Oh, one more thing, I wonder how he got to that BB writers festival, by plane and car i bet? Typical leftist hypocrite.

June 3, 2018 6:20 pm

“Byron Bay Writers’ Festival”

“I’m asked the same question: since there’s no policy issue more important than responding to global warming, and we’re doing so little about it, why do I ever write about anything else?”

One, wonders just what kind of awards they give each other… I really do not want to know!

Apparently, this crowd doesn’t drink their sorrows away.
It is also certain that whatever they’re smoking, they should stop.

Fredar
Reply to  ATheoK
June 4, 2018 6:54 am

You would think that the most important issue today, that is damaging both people and environment, is poverty.

Patrick MJD
June 3, 2018 6:32 pm

Ross Gitting is an economist writer for the Sydney Morning Herald.

Reply to  Patrick MJD
June 3, 2018 8:18 pm

And here I thought SMH was…

Smack My Head!🤦‍♂️

Patrick MJD
Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
June 3, 2018 11:14 pm

When you read articles about climate change and the science at the SMH…it’s is time to SMH! He may be a great economics writer but he simply follows the party line and unwilling to challenge, let alone question, the consensus.

Jeremy
June 3, 2018 7:00 pm

[insert “you_dont_say_meme.jpg”]

Javert Chip
June 3, 2018 7:03 pm

So how exactly did this Ross Gitins fool get to the Byron’s Bay Writers Festival (which, apparently, he’s been to several times before)?

Walk?

Hugs
Reply to  Javert Chip
June 3, 2018 10:39 pm

He’s an Entitled, no way he’d walk. But if he did, he’d make a big number about it.

(I’m just guessing, but show me wrong if you can)

LdB
Reply to  Javert Chip
June 3, 2018 11:33 pm

Haven’t you read “Animal Farm” you should know “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.”

Ed Zuiderwijk
June 3, 2018 7:12 pm

The grandchildren of that writer will find something completely different hard to believe. By then they will know that the man-made climate change belief is like the belief in witchcraft. If you are convinced it exists you see it everywhere. His grandchildren will know that the whole caboodle was just another delusion, another period of history when reason went off the rails.

What his grandchildren will find difficult to believe is that their own grandfather has fallen for it, lock stock and barrelĺ.

MarkMcD
June 3, 2018 7:16 pm

“Apparently, only socialists think their grandkids will have anything to worry about. The right-thinkers among us know the only bad thing our offspring will inherit is Labor’s debt.”
And yet none of them actually LIVE their beliefs and give up all fossil fuel tech, use and transport.

As for Labor’s debt, that’s a strange place to go given Halal Mal has doubled the debt he slammed from Labor’s time in the Sun.

Jeff
June 3, 2018 7:16 pm

In my opinion the guy is a fool and delusional.
He argues against a proposed tax cut for Australian companies to 25%
http://www.rossgittins.com/2017/12/how-trumps-tax-cuts-will-affect.html

When the rest of the world is lowering theirs and reaping the benefit.
US down to 21% (+ state tax)
UK 19% (further down to 17% in 2020)
EU average 19.48%
Asia average 21.21%
https://home.kpmg.com/xx/en/home/services/tax/tax-tools-and-resources/tax-rates-online/corporate-tax-rates-table.html

Australia will be characterised as one highest company taxes in the world.
It will mean our companies will be more likely to go bankrupt or contract and reduce staff (and so pay less tax).
And less likely to expand and self invest and hire more people.
We are heading for recession and banana republic status.

Patrick MJD
Reply to  Jeff
June 3, 2018 7:54 pm

Not only taxes but wages too. One of the reasons Ford and GM Holden announced in 2016 they were pulling out of Australia was wages. It costs 2 times as much as in the EU and 4 times as much in Asia to build a car in Aus. However, our brilliant politicians, and most of the population, believe the property market is all Australia needs to sustain the economy.

Jeff
Reply to  Patrick MJD
June 3, 2018 8:34 pm

And also electricity prices are some of the highest in the world (double the US),
which is crazy considering all our natural resources.

Patrick MJD
Reply to  Jeff
June 3, 2018 11:10 pm

As well as labour costs, energy costs were also cited as a reason for pulling out of Aus. Australia has massive resources which we simply allow to be exported without a single ounce of value add. Then we import products other countries, China, actually make using Australian iron and aluminium ore and coal.

AGW is not Science
Reply to  Patrick MJD
June 6, 2018 9:20 am

I guess they haven’t figured out that when the industry and jobs (i.e., the “economy”) depart, the “property market” will tank too, leaving them with…nothing.

Reginald Vernon Reynolds
Reply to  Jeff
June 3, 2018 9:09 pm

But the EU sales taxes (VAT in UK) run between 15 and 25% on virtually everything.

Jeff
Reply to  Reginald Vernon Reynolds
June 4, 2018 5:01 pm

I think sales tax is fair, as it taxes consumption.
Our economy would be stronger if company tax,income tax and GST were all a flat 20%.
And reduce government size and spending.

Alan Tomalty
Reply to  Jeff
June 3, 2018 9:35 pm

Gittens even admits that his land is called OZ. I thought we in Canada lived in the land of OZ since we are going to spend $35 billion over next 5 years to lower our share of the global temperature increase at the end of the year 2100 by 0.005C . Maybe the Wizard of OZ has an empire. My gads I never thought of that.

Gary
June 3, 2018 7:16 pm

Did an earlier generation delay moving from the horse and buggy to the motor car because of the disruption it would cause to the horse industry?

We abandoned the horse and buggy for motor vehicles because the latter are a more efficient mode for moving people and products. Does Mr. Gittins think the modern economy would function based on the Amish model?

Ed Zuiderwijk
Reply to  Gary
June 3, 2018 7:45 pm

At the turn of the 20th century horses produced millions of tons of manure in London alone, not to speak of the urine lake each day.

https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Great-Horse-Manure-Crisis-of-1894/

Ed Zuiderwijk
Reply to  Ed Zuiderwijk
June 4, 2018 3:31 am

But hey! Transport was powered by biofuels then. What’s not to like?

Jeff
Reply to  Gary
June 3, 2018 9:01 pm

No taxpayer funded government subsidies required to convert from horse to car.
Just a free market and basic economics.
Unlike converting to solar and wind

AGW is not Science
Reply to  Jeff
June 6, 2018 9:25 am

YES! There’s the rub. If solar and wind were such miracles, we wouldn’t need the government to push them, private companies would be doing ACTUAL “investing” in them, the so-called “investments” they are making now are nothing more than “subsidy and mandate farming.”

Keith
Reply to  Jeff
June 6, 2018 3:55 pm

Who built the roads? Who obtained the right of way? Who built the interstate? The relationship between business and government isn’t as simple as you imply. Government investment in new technology can pay for itself in the long run. Look at the internet — huge ARPA, DARPA and NSF outlays created a thing that every business wanted but no business could create, and then that thing allowed for entirely new businesses whose combined value dwarfs the government costs.

SAMURAI
June 3, 2018 7:30 pm

The Left is quickly losing their CAGW propaganda war.

None of the Left’s gloom and doom CAGW predictions are coming close to reflecting reality so more informed and rational people are beginning to seriously doubt the efficacy of the CAGW hypotheis.

In particular, CAGW climate models predicted global temp anomalies should be around 1.1C as of May 2018, while the UAH temp anomaly is now at just 0.18C… OOPS!

Ocean “acidification”, Sea Level Rise, severe weather frequency/intensity are at 50~100+ year average levels, Antarctic Land Ice increasing at 80 billion tons/yr, crop yields increased 200% since 1960, etc.

All the empircal evidence/physics show ECS will be between 0.6C~1.2C, (a net benefit), and nowhere near the 3C~4.5C Leftist rent seekers once predicted.

CAGW is already dead.

Alan Tomalty
Reply to  SAMURAI
June 4, 2018 1:43 am

Not in Canada it isnt. Trudeau is going to force new taxes of $35 billion over next 5 years to lower our share of the global temperature increase at the end of the year 2100 by 0.005C. But it isnt clear that we will even save that amount of temperature. If the firms simply pay the carbon taxes and dont cut back production then pass the extra costs onto the consumer the government will end up with $35 billion more and nothing accomplished. If you run a blast furnace it wont run on solar or wind power. Even if somehow the CO2 target figures are met how sure is the IPCC of climate sensitivity especially 82 years from now? Even if the IPCC can measure climate sensitivity to 3 digits correctly at the end of 82 years from now, is 0.005 C going to mean that any less ice will melt in 82 years?

As you can see the whole thing is one STUPID exercise The stupidest and most economically destructive exercise ever invented. I shudder to think what all the governments around the world are spending just count up the CO2 emitted by their industries. The formula is Emissions =activity data * emission factor.

Activity data is the amount of each fuel burned
Emission factor is average emission rate of a given pollutant for a given source

The emissions are then reported in greenhouse gas equivalents.

Now I understand. Since we report greenhouse gas emissions in CO2 equivalents; that is not the same as actual CO2 in the air. So the IPCC has screwed it up again because everybody is only looking at the CO2 numbers. However wikipedia say that total forcing of methane is 20% So you really cant compare each country’s emissions with the increase in CO2 announced from Mauna Loa anyway. We already knew that because even though mankind has increased emissions by 80% in last 30 years CO2 levels only went up by 22%. However since methane is being tracked as an emission in CO2 equivalent then we are taxing methane as well. However cows put out more methane than humans do in industry. So far the farmers have been given a pass. Will Trudeau put a tax on cow farting? The methane figures from Mauna Loa seem to be tracking on the same upward curve that the CO2 is tracking. However natural sources of emissions of methane are larger than man’ contribution and the accuracy of tracking the whole methane cycle is so fraught with errors that it dwarfs the errors in CO2 tracking. However it turns out that methane is completely irrelevant as a greenhouse gas. Thus IPCC has screwed up yet again.

To quote from a previous WUWT article by Dr. Tom Sheahen 4 years ago

“Looking across the wavelength scale at the bottom, H2O absorbs strongly in the 3-micron region, and again between 5 and 7 microns; then it absorbs to some degree beyond about 12 microns. CO2 has absorption bands centered around 2.5 microns, 4.3 microns, and has a broad band out beyond 13 microns. Consequently, CO2 adds a small contribution to the greenhouse effect. Notice that sometimes CO2 bands overlap with H2O bands, and with vastly more H2O present, CO2 doesn’t matter in those bands.
Looking at the second graph in the figure, methane (CH4) has narrow absorption bands at 3.3 microns and 7.5 microns (the red lines). CH4 is 20 times more effective an absorber than CO2 – in those bands. However, CH4 is only 0.00017% (1.7 parts per million) of the atmosphere. Moreover, both of its bands occur at wavelengths where H2O is already absorbing substantially. Hence, any radiation that CH4 might absorb has already been absorbed by H2O. The ratio of the percentages of water to methane is such that the effects of CH4 are completely masked by H2O. The amount of CH4 must increase 100-fold to make it comparable to H2O.
Because of that, methane is irrelevant as a greenhouse gas. The high per-molecule absorption cross section of CH4 makes no difference at all in our real atmosphere.
Unfortunately, this numerical reality is overlooked by most people. There is a lot of misinformation floating around, causing needless worry. The tiny increases in methane associated with cows may elicit a few giggles, but it absolutely cannot be the basis for sane regulations or national policy.”

well the alarmists give the cows a pass the same way that humans get a pass on breathing out CO2 . The pass is that both eat food which was grown and that used CO2 or methane .

alsosice the methane gowth curve is evem less than the CO2 growth curve the alarmists dont bring it up much. BUT THE GOVERNMENTS DO . And that is why I am complaining because the alarmists have it wrong on both greenhouse gases and both are costing us big money in taxes. We must remember that so called carbon trading and carbon taxes are in reality GHG taxes.

AGW is not Science
Reply to  SAMURAI
June 6, 2018 9:29 am

Agreed, EXCEPT that “ECS” with regard to CO2 levels would ONLY be that high if you make the very GENEROUS assumption that ALL of the temperature rise is caused by CO2 – which it is not. In fact, there is little scientific basis for saying ANY of it is – it’s all just hypothetical BS.

Gary Pearse
June 3, 2018 7:35 pm

Well if we are waiting for Titanic earth to perish, why would Ross write about anything else? It shows a strange illogical wifty-poofty dichotomy in the minds of these troubled folk. Their gross нiросяisy too is puzzling.

Most remarkable of all aspects of the вig Liе thats hidden in plain site is that climate science is composed of and is a tool of a шнутемаи’s иеосоlоиiаl моvемеит. The real 97%+ feature is this composition of the players and the supporters, big шнутые foundations & вilliоиаугеs, After
its underpinnings began to crumble young (mainly of the same гасе) women did begin to come out of graduate schools too late to have a full career in it (I tried ti warn one of them but to no avail).

Perhaps all this “dуvегsiту” stuff is a smoke screen for the Euroethnic makeup of it all. How have they gotten away with this evеn bigger нуросяisу given who the main group to bear the biggest burden of this is. Perhaps they haven’t. Delaying the payola to the least developed countries may bring anabrupt stop to it.

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  Gary Pearse
June 5, 2018 4:27 pm

Gary, some of your words resemble Russian, as in “шнутемаи’s иеосоlоиiаl моvемеит.”

Jacob Frank
June 3, 2018 7:41 pm

Why is the only thing they can think to do about the issue is wail and moan ? Dude should sell his car and make his own clothes or something, These people are in a mental Gordian knot and I feel sorry for them to a degree. Anguish of the mind is pitiful and I don’t wish it on anyone.

Khwarizmi
June 3, 2018 7:47 pm

My uncle had a long and very expensive battle with greenies while trying to protect his Byron Bay beachfront property from erosion.
https://www.northernstar.com.au/news/rock-wall-was-promised/2684485/

June 3, 2018 7:50 pm

OT …breaking news Fuego volcano in Guatemala has erupted 7 dead, many imjured. in a massive eruption.

June 3, 2018 7:51 pm

Fuego eruption blasted 10 kilometers into the atmosphere.

Khwarizmi
Reply to  goldminor
June 3, 2018 8:32 pm

Thanks for that news.

Here is the eruption from GOES-16/east in Geocolor (~2pm–6pm UTC):
http://col.st/KWFF6
You have to peer through the clouds, but you can still see it.

viewed through the EUMETSAT ash product (~2PM–8PM UTC)
http://col.st/vspK2
(change start and end frames on settings under archive imagery checkbox)

Reply to  Khwarizmi
June 3, 2018 8:54 pm

Earth warning alerts …this is starting to look pretty crazy, imo. Here are two interesting YouTubes. One discusses new cracks in Hawaii volcano which now pose the probability of a major event, and the second video discusses a prior quake of 8.0 which coincided with a large eruptio at Mauna Loa. …https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bqGi24EpGU

So from my daily observations. Quakes at Mauna Loa dropped off the other day to a minimal count, and then shot up to 140/24hrs today. Along with that global quakes have also increased today, which is out of sync with the typical pattern over the last 5 years. The signs are not looking good, imo. …https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmIvwxjCDxc

AGW is not Science
Reply to  goldminor
June 6, 2018 9:32 am

If the volcanoes continue to erupt, they’ll find some pseudo-science explanation of how THAT is caused by human CO2 emissions too!

Wallaby Geoff
June 3, 2018 8:02 pm

The wonder is whether Gittins really believes it or is toeing the party line for his lefty editors. A bit like those who work for the BBC or ABC. Dont believe in CAGW? There’s the door son, don’t come Monday. BTW, I’ve been to Byron Bay many times. It’s OK but the beach is no better than hundreds of others up the Australian east coast.

June 3, 2018 8:04 pm

Ross Gittins is writing pure drivel. He has no apparent scientific training, but ASSUMES that catastrophic man-made global warming is a crisis that will doom humanity and the environment. That very-scary global warming hypothesis has already been disproved, based on many lines of evidence.

Nevertheless, there always seems to be an audience for this sort of doomsday nonsense.

Ever notice how some people just love a novel idea, no matter how crazy it is? They tend to be young, teenagers and young adults, self-styled “Progressives”, but some people retain this extreme form of naivety all their lives.

They just want to be “special” – they want to think they are more open and thus more intelligent than their peers, but their fatal flaw is they fail to examine the evidentiary basis and the credibility of the hypothesis they have adopted – that would be too much like real intelligence; too much like real work.

[end of rant]

drednicolson
Reply to  ALLAN MACRAE
June 4, 2018 5:44 am

They mistake exclusivity for enlightenment. Sometimes an idea is only entertained by a select few… because it’s a BAD IDEA.

June 3, 2018 8:21 pm

If they wanted to write about climate and environment, he could weite about how well the biosphere is doing.
Greening.
Growing.
Abundant harvests.
Resilient in the face of the worst mankind has thrown it.

John Sandhofner
June 3, 2018 8:57 pm

“Our grandchildren will find it hard to believe we could have been so short-sighted as to delay moving from ….. harnessing the infinite supply of solar and wind power ” Actually, Mr. Gittins, our grandchildren will be asking how it was that so many liberals blindly accepted information that was truly fake science. By that time enough time will have passed such that it will be completely evident that today’s hype is all for political purposes. By the way Gittins, though you may think it is infinite it is not always reliable at the time you need it. Were does your energy come from on a windless night?

Pop Piasa
Reply to  John Sandhofner
June 4, 2018 8:17 pm

On windless nights energy might come from the batteries that have yet to be invented, which would hopefully be 5 to 10 times as energy dense for their mass as the present status quo.
Of course, we’ll need much more compact solar and wind harvesting equipt along with those batteries, too.

Wake me when it happens.

June 3, 2018 9:11 pm

Good eye mite.

June 3, 2018 11:36 pm

The blast of Fuego erupting was captured on video, pretty impressive. …https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n24A-PLNVg0

Hans-Georg
June 4, 2018 3:29 am

“The biggest mistake we’ve made is to allow our politicians to turn concern about global warming into a party-political issue, and do so merely for their own short-term advantage.”

This shows already the mental attitude of these high priests: We allowed our politicians ………!

These idiots, however, have nothing at all to allow, but have to submit to the political direction that sets the people in the regularly recurring elections.

Bruce Cobb
June 4, 2018 4:31 am

I’m detecting a great disturbance in the Climate farce.

Pop Piasa
Reply to  Bruce Cobb
June 4, 2018 2:47 pm

It’s the collective snoring of millions who’ve drifted off while pondering the future and if climate change
might actually affect them.

ResourceGuy
June 4, 2018 5:37 am

Liberal media gets paid to bang on about global warming and the best example of that was the splash of money paid to publishers far and wide ahead of the Paris Climate Agreement.

Zigmaster
June 4, 2018 7:04 am

I always find the comment that wind and sun and water are free so they are obviously cheap but coal isn’t. Like everything in this area the inputs are all basically free. Coal and uranium are basically just sitting there waiting to be exploited in the same way is the sun and the wind. The cost is in harnessing these various sources that differentiates renewables from fossil fuels. When one values the cost based on cost per kilowatt hour coal wins hands down because the intermittency of renewables means that cost wise they require base load backup. If you need base load backup , cut out the middle man don’t have any renewables and run the economy on the base load supply.

June 4, 2018 8:38 am

“The biggest mistake we’ve made is to allow our politicians to turn concern about global warming into a party-political issue, and do so merely for their own short-term advantage.”

While this is most definitely true, it was the warmists who made the science partisan and it’s the warmist who need the illogical justifications of politics to support their physics defying projections of doom. Anyone who doesn’t recognize the IPCC the political organization that has been pushing the science out of climate science for the last 3 decades hasn’t been paying attention.

Gittens is exhibiting classic psychological projection like so many of his cultists.

Amber
June 4, 2018 1:33 pm

Tired of this worn out fear mongering about oh the poor “grand children ” . What a complete load of manipulative crap .
Fossil fuels have created the highest quality of life in the planets history .
Check your grand kids reaction to you asking them to shut off play station , and that you are take them to spend the summer in Antarctica .
What a completely asinine proposition that humans are somehow going to set the earths thermostat .
I do feel sorry for any kid that has a relative or teacher stupid enough to be trying to sell that propaganda .

Pop Piasa
June 4, 2018 2:33 pm

Doesn’t this simp realize that harvesting all the “free” energy relies on “digging stuff out of the ground” to make the grossly inefficient contraptions we call “renewables”?
N. Tesla laughs at us from the grave. We don’t yet understand the concept of harvesting real energy from our sun.

Pop Piasa
Reply to  Pop Piasa
June 4, 2018 2:35 pm

(The kind that powers the aurorae and sprites, plus more!)

far2right
June 6, 2018 4:45 am

“if I banged on about nothing but global warming”

Honest journalists do not “bang” on pet topics.

True journalists report all evidence and viewpoints of any particular topic.

That is precisely why the average Joe sees right thru the MSM and their CC narrative.

People are tired of the one sided story.

And the utter failure of the MSM to address crucial contradicting facts raised by WUWT and Climate Depot.