Guest Opinion: Dr. Tim Ball
These opening comments will trigger knee-jerk responses from proponents of the human-caused global warming deception. Just saying President Trump is sufficient to trigger them. However, when I add that he handled the Lesley Stahl CBS interview well, the comments will appear without them reading any further. Poke them, and they blindly respond triggered by the tunnel-vision of political ideology and the source of their funding.
This article is a response to an interesting experience involving an article I wrote for WUWT. As most readers know, I rarely reply to comments and almost never go back to read my earlier articles. While preparing to produce another article I needed to confirm something from one of these articles. I was astonished to read that in response to a complaint from two researchers Anthony added a foreword to the article.
It is Anthony’s website, and he is entitled to control it however he chooses. Over the years there were several cases when he questioned, challenged, ask for a revision, or simply would not publish a comment. However, we always worked these out to our mutual satisfaction. One of the things I did to offset many of Anthony’s concerns was to place the qualifier “Guest Opinion” after each headline. Again, I am not challenging Anthony’s right to add the qualifier to the article in question. My concern is what triggered his action. I immediately recognized the technique used by the perpetrators and believe that everyone should understand what was done. Problems are only problems if you are unaware of them. That is also true about biases.
I am more than qualified to speak about this topic after 40 years of dealing with all types of media and people on all sides of an issue in a variety of formats from all over the world. Besides this university of the real world, I took courses in communication and media as part of officer training in the military and continued as a student and practitioner ever since. Clear patterns emerge, a few of which I discuss here, however, the overall pattern is that the mainstream media was unchanged for at least 236 years. It was and remains a vehicle for the power elite, as William Cowper’s 1782 poem The Progress of Error reveals.
How shall I speak of thee or thy power address,
The God of our idolatry, the press?
By thee, religion, liberty and laws
Exert their influence and advance their cause;
By thee worse plagues than Pharaoh’s land befell,
Diffused, make Earth the vestibule of Hell:
Thou fountain, at which drink the good and wise;
Thou ever-bubbling spring of endless lies;
Like Eden’s dead probationary tree,
Knowledge of good and evil is from thee!
What changed was the advent of the Internet that bypassed the mainstream media and gave ordinary citizens access to more information than many governments had in the past. It meant that people using the Internet developed the methods and tricks of the mainstream media. Change the word “press” in Cowper’s poem to the Internet, and you see what I mean.
I was part of a group gathered in Washington in November 2015 to talk about policy for climate and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) during a Trump Presidency. The consensus was that he should avoid making decisions based on bad science. It is bad science, but at least 80% of the public don’t understand any science; therefore, they cannot identify bad science. In addition, no matter how much you prepare, somebody will ask a question you can’t answer, and it only needs one. Instead, he should exit the Paris Climate Agreement because it is a bad deal and fits his main theme of improving or expunging them.
As the media loses its power and control over the information the people access most, they chose to become aggressive, uncivil, devious, and biased. I experienced it as they changed. It is telling that the FOX news slogan is “Fair and Balanced.” They did it because the competition was no longer fair and balanced. Of course, FOX only pays lip service to the idea by having a few token liberals in what are, from my observations, contrived and stupid.
The technique of mainstream media interviews was on full display in the Stahl interview. The interviewer begins by establishing a false premise, with a false fact, or a quote from a person who doesn’t know the subject. Stahl did it with the information about Greenland ice chunks breaking off and raising sea level. It is a technique used throughout the environmental and the human-caused global warming hysteria.
For example, Paul Ehrlich already established the false premise of overpopulation in his 1968 book The Population Bomb. In 1977, he followed it up in a book, “Ecoscience,” co-authored with John Holdren, Obama’s Science Advisor with proposals for mitigating the false problem. One proposal said,
Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.
That sounds reasonable on the face of it. However, you understand the deception when you ask questions that expose the technique.
- Who concluded that such laws were sustainable?
- Who decides there is a population crisis?
- Who decides when it endangers society.
In each case, the answer is, they do.
Maurice Strong and the creators of Agenda 21 introduced a similar technique when listing the Principles for that global policy document. It incorporated the most popular justification for action by environmentalists, namely the precautionary principle. If the facts are not available, then argue that we should act ‘just in case.’ Here it is as Principle 15.
In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.
Again, it sounds reasonable, especially tot eh casual reader. The questions are
- Who decides the environment needs ‘protecting?’
- Who decides how to protect the environment?
- Who decides which States are capable?
- Who decides the level of capability?
- Who decides what are “serious threats”?
- Who decides when the damage is approaching an ability to reverse it?
- Who decides what is an appropriate level of “scientific certainty”?
- Who decides what “cost-effective” measures are?
Again, the answer is they do.
I quickly learned that the first thing you must do is question the false premise. This brings me to the issue that triggered this article. I went back to an article on the need to address the motive behind the AGW deception. I argued that once you get the public accepting that the idea that science was corrupted to produce a predetermined outcome. This involved narrowing the science through definitions and limitations of variables to a focus on CO2. After they accept these ideas, the next logical question is to ask about the motive? I pointed out in the article that in many recent media interviews this was one of the first questions.
Anybody who reads the comments about articles on WUWT knows the pattern of responses and the core of people and their positions. I know the comments that topics will elicit. The most predictable responses are whenever the question of motive is raised. The perpetrators and ongoing supporters of the AGW deception used it to push a socialist agenda.
The complaint from the two people appeared as an article titled “A big goose-step backward” and was referenced by Anthony at the beginning of my original article. I will not repeat their names, suffice to comment on the obvious bias because of their positions and funding, identified by several people in their comments. As Upton Sinclair said,
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” (I know it is sexist as stated but still applicable to all with salaries).
Their complaint was about the use of the word denier to describe those who questioned the IPCC science. It was in the context of the change from global warming skeptics to climate change deniers. I added, the phrase, with all the holocaust connotations of the word, hence the reference to goose-stepping. They began their complaint with establishing a false and emotional premise designed to marginalize any who might question their charge. They introduced the word “Nazi” followed by the claim I was debasing the entire debate. I never used the word “Nazi.” I referred to the use of the term because I lived through the evolution of the word denier in the climate debate. The term was deliberately and carefully chosen for precisely the connotation I gave it.
To understand the tenor and tone of what went on, consider Michael Mann’s comment in a 2004 email about the RealClimate website,
“…the important thing is to make sure they’re loosing (sic) the PR battle. That’s what the site is about.”
On that website, a 16 December 2004 entry asks,
“Is there really “consensus” in the scientific community on the reality of anthropogenic climate change?”
They provided their answer on 22 December 2004.
We’ve used the term “consensus” here a bit recently without ever really defining what we mean by it. In normal practice, there is no great need to define it – no science depends on it. But it’s useful to record the core that most scientists agree on, for public presentation. The consensus that exists is that of the IPCC reports, in particular the working group I report (there are three WG’s. By “IPCC”, people tend to mean WG I).
The second sentence is the key to their deceptive practices. They acknowledge that consensus does not apply to science, but then use it because it will deceive the public. And what is the consensus, on which they agree? The scientists at the IPCC agree, therefore there is a consensus.
In the same year, 2004, emails between “Nick” at the Minns/Tyndall Centre, the group involved in handling PR for the people at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), identified their dilemma. He wrote,
“In my experience, global warming freezing is already a bit of a public relations problem with the media.”
Swedish alarmist and climate expert on the IPCC, Bo Kjellen replied,
“I agree with Nick that climate change might be a better labelling than global warming.”
In that year, across the media, the term global warming was replaced by the term climate change, when talking about the work of the IPCC and the threat to the world. However, they didn’t leave it there. Global Warming Skeptics became Climate Change Deniers. Why make that change? The switch from Global Warming was necessary to hide the fact that their theory no longer matched the evidence. It would have been reasonable to simply call those who continued to question the science, Climate Change Skeptics, but they decided not to do that.
The answer to that question involves the nature of another debate on the front page at the time, namely the battles with David Irving, renowned Holocaust denier. He went to trial in 2001 and was sentenced and jailed in 2006. If you are interested, the recreation of the events and entire trial were portrayed in a movie called “Denial.”
The motive behind the entire misuse of climate for a political agenda was to create a world government. Maurice Strong made that clear to Elaine Dewar who concluded after five days with him at the UN and hearing him explain his goals that,
“Strong was using the U.N. as a platform to sell a global environment crisis and the Global Governance Agenda.”
If you are not convinced that the people at the CRU would connive and manipulate both the science and the people, go and read the leaked emails. On the back of their book, Crutapes” Mosher and Fuller summarized them for you,
- Actively worked to evade (Steve) Mcintyre’s Freedom of Information requests, deleting emails, documents, and even climate data
- Tried to corrupt the peer-review principles that are the mainstay of modern science, reviewing each other’s’ work, sabotaging efforts of opponents trying to publish their own work, and threatening editors of journals who didn’t bow to their demands
- Changed the shape of their own data in materials shown to politicians charged with changing the shape of our world, ‘hiding the decline’ that showed their data could not be trusted.
If you don’t think the fight is political with all the accompanying nastiness, lies, and deceits, then ask yourself why, if you accept the theory of AGW you are liberal and informed. However, if you question at all, you are conservative and uninformed, regardless of your actual political views. It is the nature of the left to attack the individual in the vilest ways possible and without any evidence. It is their nature to isolate those who dare to question their orthodoxy.
No, I will not be bullied by those with a political agenda and vested interests. I stand by my comment about the connotations of the use of the phrase holocaust deniers. Besides, I lived through the war in England and know what the Germans did.
The UN and IPCC don’t even believe the science they are spewing…
You can’t say CO2 is a dangerous pollutant…and out the other side of your mouth say the vast majority of countries can emit all the CO2 they want…until they make enough money
So even the IPCC and UN don’t believe it
Latitude,
You can say exactly that if you believe in solving poverty and historical injustices before future
problems. And the only fair way of cutting CO2 emissions is to allow everyone the same level
which implies that the rich need to cut their emissions greatly while the poor can raise their in order
to bring them out of poverty and allow them the same standards of living as the rest of us.
Percy Jackson – Haven’t you learned anything? The rich don’t cut their CO2 emissions, it’s always the poor that cop it. Think Al Gore. Think climate scientists pumping vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere as they fly to the next mega conference. Think George Orwell’s “some are more equal than others”. Think energy poverty caused by renewables. The evidence is everywhere you look: ordinary people all around the free world are being shafted – and that’s the first step towards not being free.
Bingo, we have a winner
Of course if you make rich countries poor and reduce their purchasing power, you’ve absolutely kneecapped the ability of poor countries to become rich.
Poverty is not related to historical injustice. Poverty is a social and economic, hence political, pro blem. Social injustice is a guilt-trip argument to be used on the wealthy. Different things entirley.
Making rich people poorer doesn’t make poor people richer; it makes the intermediaries richer. And the UN, as the fetal world government, is the intermediary.
Sorry for the strong language, but the whole AGW thing is a political campaign by the UN and other socialists. Do not forget that Socialism has always been an international political campaign. Remember the “Socialists Internationales” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_International
well-said Robert of Ottawa.
Robert,
Of course poverty is related to historical injustices. Protestant Britain stopped the catholics
from entering University, and hence becoming lawyers, doctors etc. The British stole the wealth of India, Ireland etc and used it to build railways, roads, plumbing etc in the UK. In
Australia, North America, New Zealand the natives were forced from the most fertile land and forced to live in the desert or on every shrinking reservations etc. All of which has direct consequences even today. Not to mention the slave trade and the resulting poverty in Africa and that of African Americans in the USA.
Oh, and who was doing that? Governments. And don’t claim they were corrupted by capitalists. It was the power of the state that allowed that to happen.
And you go after the British. How about Spain, Russia, Belgium, Italy, China, Japan, etc.
And amazingly, when the Brits left those third world countries the locals made a mess out of it by going socialist with the accompanying corruption.
Percy, stop trying to use the US slave trade as some sort of guilt trip. It is in fact Liberal policies that have held black Americans back. As the excellent Thomas Sowell has said:
Percy, stop trying to use the US slave trade as some sort of guilt trip. You’ve got all wrong. As the excellent Thomas Sowell has said:
Whoops. Replication – Mods, please delete my second comment.
But nobody should ever have to pay for the sin of their fathers, grandfathers, and great grandfathers, etc., (for nearly all the leaders were men). It is NOT just!
‘US slave trade’ Slave trade goes back at least 6000 years and is still going on today. US slave trade moves in the shadows of illegal activity. If you study the history of U.S slave trade you will find it’s roots in a law suit that a black man won against the Crown of England in Colonial Virginia changing indentured servitude to include slavery. Rectified by the XIII Amendment.
Percy,
Governments caused all of these problems you list. The answer is not more governmental intervention by central planning as Maurice Strong envisioned. That approach will lead to global impoverishment. I saw this first hand when I worked in Poland in the mid 1970s. Whatever was centrally planned ultimately failed to deliver.
Poverty is purely a comparative notion, in order to even recognize such a concept there have to be some rich ones around. Without them all have the same, which is little or nothing. And voila, happiness goes up.
The salient point is this:
did the rich, ie the have-mores, have that more only by virtue of taking it from the have littles? According to people like you, that’s the only way.
Not true of course, there are ways other than stealing, as people like Adam Smith and David Ricardo shows long ago.
Most important of all:
Poverty is the natural state of the human condition:
we are born with nothing other than our life.
People who blame poverty on takers forget this, always.
Percy:
“British stole the wealth of India, Ireland etc and used it to build railways, roads, plumbing etc in the UK.”
https://www.railway-technology.com/features/timeline-165-years-history-indian-railways/
“Following the Indian rebellion of 1857 and the subsequent liquidation of the East India Company, the British Raj reigned supreme in India. From 1869-1881, it took control of railway construction from external contractors and increased expansion to help areas struck by famine after intense droughts in the country. The length of the network reached 9,000 miles by 1880, with lines snaking inward from the three major port cities of Bombay, Madras and Calcutta.”
Percy, re read what you just said! Yes the cheap fossil fuel energy is essential to erase poverty and discontinuing its use will create poverty everywhere unless you can replace it with another form of reliable affordable energy. Do you also understand that impoverishing the most productive world economies will impoverish the presently poor even further. Thinking has to be done deeper and more holistically than what you do.
Percy – ” if you believe in solving poverty and historical injustices before future
problems”
What does that have to do with climate and global warming?
FIRST you must show that we actually do have a problem.
Please show evidence that man’s CO2 is causing serious global warming.
Exactly. The more we learn about our atmosphere and the planet as a whole, the more obvious it becomes that the benefits of increasing CO2 far outweigh the imagined harm. While the planet has slightly warmed, storm activity (hurricanes and tornadoes) has decreased, and the Earth has gotten much, much greener. I’ve looked for the negative impacts of increasing CO2 and catastrophic anthropogenic global warming every day for the past 40+ years, and so far I’ve not seen a single one: zero, zilch, nada. But in the meantime, every single prediction/projection of the climastrologists and their models has failed miserably. The sheeple need to wake up.
“Future problems”!? Balderdash!
Imagine if your great grandparents decided to solve problems they believed were in the future for you to suffer.
And the solution was to beggar what was the current productive part of the world while denying the rest of the world any ability to achieve parity.
A plan that is identical to the IPCC’s current plan.
Perry in the spirit of the article
Who decides what is classed as poverty what is the metric?
Who decides what was a historical injustice (that one is to my mind impossible)?
Who decides what is a future problem?
Who decides what a fair level of CO2 emissions is?
I would also add two points:
1.) It is unlikely you can’t bring those in poverty up to the same standards , the above standards usually must reduce and you meet somewhere between the two you have finite resources.
2.) The challenge you leave out is doing any of that without a war or getting put against the wall. You are basically asking peoples and countries to give money to there historic enemies and smile while doing it.
First of all you are starting with exactly the sort of false premise mantioned in the article. Why do CO2 emissions need to be cut? If CO2 is really so bad then there should be no increase allowed even for developing countries, who can identify US CO2 from Indian CO2?
If the world is at risk of imminent doom due to CO2 then it it is too late to allow any increase from China, India and the rest of SE Asia. Everything should stop now.
However that is not really the case, what we are seeing is an attempt at wealth re-distribution from the West to developing nations, rather than allow them to develop and produce their own wealth.
The process of wealth re-distribution via the UN involves the Global Financiers and International Bankers, who take major cuts from managing processes such as the UNFCC Clean Development Mechanism, up to 40% of the amount involved in a project, with fees paid to consultants, lawyers, validaters, compliance monitors, you name, it someone will have a finger in the pie.
This is why a Global Carbon Tax is seen as the ultimate prize and what Kyoto and then Paris were all about. Global governance via the UN and control of energy usage and cost.
Check out the photo below from Paris, to see the politicians, bankers and financiers with their Climate Queen, Christiana Figueres, then head of UNFCCC, herself a former “carbon” trade adviser with Lord Stern of the UK, at the Carbon Ratings Agency, an ofshoot of IdeaGlobal and IdeaCarbon.
The picture tells the story.
https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/abyd-karmali-managing-director-of-climate-finance-at-bank-news-photo/474214156
the rich need to cut their emissions greatly while the poor can raise their in order
to bring them out of poverty
=====
Are you talking about people or countries? Does a poor person in a rich country need to cut emissions? Why are they treated differently than a poor person in a poor country.
There are more millionaires in China that the us. Why should they get a free pass 7ntil 2030 and beyond.
For the 1000th time the earth’s atmosphere needs more CO2 Not less. The science of global warming has been dead wrong from the beginning on every level. Us skeptics can not understand what alarmists are afraid of. To us they are bedwetters just spewing back the garbage of the IPCC. No one in their right mind believes in any of the predictions of the alarmists any more. For 30 years they have been predicting disaster and it has never happened. No one has drowned because of rising sea levels (which have been rising at a steady pace of only 1.8mm a year for past 8000 years) and no one has died from heat prostration caused by global warming ( ave. global temp has increased less than 1C in a century). I am sick of this whole deception. It is going to start to hit my pocketbook starting January 1 2019 with Trudeau’s stupid introduction of a carbon tax. Utter madness.
From each according to their abilities, and to each according to their needs.
And as Mr. Ball poignantly asks, who decides those matters ? They do.
This does not compute Tim.
In fact I cant actually work out what this article is actually all about. I find it somewhat incoherent.
Leo Smith – October 20, 2018 at 11:47 am
Leo, try a “5th reading”, ….. but no farther than the 2nd paragraph, to wit:
Excerpted 2nd paragraph from Dr. Tim Ball’s above published article:
Cheers
Yeah. Having read the article a fourth time, it appears to be appealing to those who probably are not here to read it anyway – the uncommitted.
Who is here is generally a sprinkling of alarmism propagandists, and a regular crew of those interested in te real science or the politics of deep scepticism.
They don’t need telling that, by and large, the politics of the Liberal now consist of virtue signalling, faux logic and violent and destructive ad hominem attacks. They are not trying to tell the truth. They are trying to achieve narrow and usually very selfish political objectives without any regard for the truth whatsoever.
The useful idiots believe in the trash, but they are a small minority. Mostly its pure cynical mind manipulation for cash and political power.
Tim is right that the Internet changed things, but they are asserting control over that, now.
The article is addressed to the regular readers here, for the purposes of educating us on deceptive practices. The article does just fine at that.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make a Liberal think. The article is not for the Liberals, they can’t be educated in any way whatsoever.
The deceptive political practices are widespread and relentless. Here is a primer on what is going on in a larger context than simply climate science as a reminder and for everyone’s further education: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=260
Mr. Layman here.
In genuine “science”, there are fights. Competing hypothesis, yes. Arguments supporting this or that hypotheses, yes.
Politics has introduced the “fight” into this. And greed. And the desire for power for political ends.
“Politics” is always looking for a lever to justify its “right” to impose its will on others. (For the “greater good” and all that.)
“CAGW” was almost a perfect lever. But Ma’ Nature stepped in. (And Climategate)
I was not clear. (Sorry)
“In genuine “science”, there are fights.”
What I was trying to communicate is that “politics” is what has introduced the idea that suppressing the opposing view is acceptable and even justified to further the political hand on the “lever”.
In climate “science” the goal is now a political outcome, not a scientific understanding.
Lindzen gave a splendid lecture at the Global Warming Policy Foundation the other week. Available on the GWPF website. I have read it and it is worth reading. In it he likens the so called political elite having to support the climate change crap because they think it makes them look intelligent, but they cannot see it for the scam that it is, whereas the man in street sees straight through it and knows it is a politically driven scam by a number of wealthy people just making money out of it.
Which makes me think the old 80/20 principle applies to the climate change rubbish. 80% will see the scam for that it is, (namely the man/woman in the street) while 20% (political elite) will believe it and will not change their minds regardless of what evidence is provided to show it is all untrue. Not sure who came up with 80/20 principle, not sure if it was Peters or not, but the climate change scam fits into it very nicely.
It’s called the Pareto principle. Here is Jordan Peterson explaining it (after some comments by another guy):
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0iL0ixoZYo&w=640&h=360%5D
I’ve always known it as Pareto.
The Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule, the law of the vital few, or the principle of factor sparsity)[1][2] states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.[3] Management consultant Joseph M. Juran suggested the principle and named it after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who noted the 80/20 connection while at the University of Lausanne in 1896, as published in his first work, Cours d’économie politique. Essentially, Pareto showed that approximately 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population.
From Wikipedia
It’s called the Pareto principle, defined by Joseph Juran, the statistical process control guru who helped the Japanese become manufacturing experts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
I agree with Leo about the awkwardness of the sentences in the article.. Tim Ball appears to be a courageous person who is often attacked for his opinions and scientific accomplishments. I read all his Guest Opinions and value his insights. However he is sometimes not a good writer. I struggle with some of his sentences to figure out what he is actually trying to say. Is there anyone who can help him to edit his articles?
Big mistake! Big! HUGE!
That is a very strange, elitist type of attitude that he does not even bother to read or respond to his articles. Something I would expect from the AGWers, and not from a real scientist.
He spent much of his career as a professor. Perhaps he’s just giving a lecture. He is a very experienced old guy and he’s been fighting the political science of climate for a long time. He’s been sued by Michael Mann and by a Canadian warmo prof from U Victoria in BC who now is a green politician. He has lots useful to say but he needs to make more calm presentations.
It is because he is already onto the next thing and re-visiting an old posting can divert you away from a new one, as you may be drawn into responding to perhaps foolish and insulting comments. Not elitist, simply pragmatic.
This explains why he never learns anything from his mistakes.
Do the CAGW types learn????
Nowhere more glaringly on display than in response to Dr. Ball’s profoundly ignorant attack on the fact of evolution. Rather than reply to the incontrovertible facts and arguments against his stupendously stinking pile of steaming stupidity, Tim tried to dismiss all the evidence against his antiscientific spew as “hand-waving”, when the whiffs were all his.
Rarely has there been a greater disservice to the reputation of this site than Tim’s diversion into errant creationism. A number of good scientists are creationists, but they know better than to venture outside their area of expertise so blatantly as did Tim with those two shameless entries.
Naturally, he didn’t and couldn’t reply based upon science.
“….In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation….”
I recall reading years ago that the Precautionary Principle was flawed because it demanded that science do something it cannot do….prove a negative. In other words, it demands that science prove something (anything) can never happen or can never be true (or false).
Dr Ball is in my opinion quite correct to raise alarm bells over the Precautionary Principle and its application to science and society. If those with the power to decide the PP’s application had unlimited ability to wage regulatory war on everyone and everything they choose, life itself might very well become intolerable.
If voices of moderation, reason and dissent are not heard and heeded, the CAGW orthodoxy might just be the tip of the iceberg. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
The Precautionary Principle fails its own standard. You can’t apply the Precautionary Principle to the Precautionary Principle.
Also, life doesn’t work that way. Life is all about risk and reward.
As soon as the Precautionary Principle is raised, you know you have won the argument.
It means that they cannot prove that something “bad” is going to happen.
Its all just in their models and imagination.
This “just in case” nonsense is not a “principle”… it is an “escape” clause
I think you have grossly over estimated the number of people in America that understand science.
Kip
Is there a reason the original WUWT article is not referenced to provide some context for this article? Should earlier articles be hidden or denied for some reason? I for one would really like to know which it was.
Andy
The article has a hyperlink- blue colour to “original article” That will take you to see the context.
IF it exists, it sure is well disguised. There is a link near the beginning of th e article but not to the WUWT article that Kip writes about.
If one does not have the science yet, how, pray tell, does one calculate the “cost-effective” ratios? If one postits a risk of overgrazing of prairie by unicorns, one needs to have some idea of the population density of unicorns and their average grass consumption.
The Precautionary Principle is a mishmash of undefined terms and illogic.
Tom Halla
The general population don’t have the ability to recognise a unicorn, never mind their prairie consumption.
They rely on the honesty and integrity (ahem) of the partnership between scientists and politicians to deliver them an honest assessment of the situation.
As we well know, and the public are rapidly recognising, neither in consort can be trusted.
Brexit and Trump being the red flags the establishment are determined to ignore, at their peril.
Tim
I made an observation concurrent with yours some time ago is that the vast majority of the public are scientifically uninformed. Therefore, constraining the debate, as sceptics insist on doing, to the scientific evidence is entirely futile.
President Trump has, thanks presumably, to your and others intervention, delivered the ‘layman’s guide to climate change’ when he peeked through his index finger and thumb to relay the reality of the problem on announcing America’s withdrawal from the Paris Accord.
That is layman’s language and laymen number, as you point out, 80% of the voting population. There is no point in convincing 20% of the population and getting only 20% of the vote when 80% of the population of America/UK/Canada?Australia/Germany……indeed any democratic country, all have one vote each.
If President Trump is as dumb as the popular left wing MSM maintain, how did he cotton onto this phenomenon? The establishment right have been demonstrably stupid enough not to recognise it, but Donald Trump, as thick as he’s portrayed, did, and even many of his his right wing colleagues are scared.
Clearly this is the reason he’s so universally despised by the left, and many of his rent seeking right wing ‘colleagues’.
He recognises and deals with the crux of the matter instead of getting wrapped up in the detail.
So our hyper intelligent scientific community would be well advised to follow his lead, dumb down their highbrow rhetoric, and start talking to the common man who, after all, they represent and who, after all, hold the popular vote.
I made an observation concurrent with yours some time ago is that the vast majority of the public are scientifically uninformed.
And it is getting worse.
Ask the average teenager how to take a screenshot of their phone, crop it, and send the image to 5 people simultaneously, and they will calmly pull out their phone and show you.
Ask the average teenager what 6 times 9 is, and they will calmly pull out their phone….
davidmhoffer
That’s why Trump trumped the establishment, he used, and uses Twitter.
He used that phenomenon, of the millennial generation, to speak to them on their own terms.
Never underestimate our youth, many of our parents said similar things about us.
davidmhoffer
And if you think about it whilst, say, 10% of our global community are highly qualified (BSc or so) then probably 10% of those BSc qualified individuals are actually competent.
So, perhaps 1% of our educated elite actually deserve to be where they are. That can be exemplified in politics. There are few politicians I would give the time of the day. They could probably multiply 6 times 9, but wouldn’t have a clue how to crop a photo on their mobile phone.
Oh my goodness, there are those 1-percenters again! Or, maybe not.
Actually he uses Twitter to bypass the politicised media filter
Hot…and they were right. Look at all the tomfoolery involved in the çcc=+ Climategate affair. And, if you really want to see the efffect, look may what wiki has to say about Climategate.
David, I dont have to tell you who dumbed down education. The left works on every level to accomplish their ignominious ends. Good private schools are doing a booming business trying to fill the vacuum. Im teaching my grandson of 10yrs high school math, elementary physics and chemistry because he is smart and bored with school for dummies.
Oh David! Why NOT let them use a calculator? Some 40 years ago I was told that my daughter did not “Know Her Math FACTS”. Now a fact you need to LEARN is something like the capital of New York is Albany. I guess a “math fact” is something like your example 6 x 9 = 54. This as a waste of “fact storage space” since you could have figured it out yourself in many ways: for example, 6 x 10 is obviously 60 so 6 x 9 is 54. Teaching reasoning if better than just using a calculator – either is better than suggesting a kid MUST master bogus facts (which are easy for a teacher to test!). Do we agree?
2015 for EPA during Trump presidency?
Every serious policy pushing group does this. You have to be ready to hit the ground running the day after an election, or you will be drowned out by those hawking the opposite. (The newly elected need this, too, or they will not have a good basis for their policy positions.)
Some of the time in these groups, of course, is taken up by working out what to do if the “other one” gets into office. So there was undoubtedly discussion about which congresspeople to work with, and what they would need to appeal to their constituents. For example, if President Hillary (spit!) was in office, you would want to work for the Senators from Texas – and see what you could do to convince Senator Manchin to at least throw a couple of monkey wrenches into the “Clean Power Plan (for the Destruction of the Economy).”
Not a new thing, either. There was a committee set up while George Washington was barely into his second term to lay the policy groundwork for either Adams or Jefferson to establish a permanent Navy. (Note, they were not successful in that aim with Adams, they had to wait for Jefferson to take the top spot.) That is the one that I recall from my history readings – there were probably others running around long before 1796 to push the next Administration and Congress on western expansion, canal building, etc., etc., etc.
Every serious policy pushing group does this. You have to be ready to hit the ground running the day after an election, or you will be drowned out by those hawking the opposite. (The newly elected need this, too, or they will not have a good basis for their policy positions.)
Agreed, but in 2015 there were 17 candidates and Trump was hardly the front runner, it would have made more sense say around March 2016 when the field had dwindled, the debates were over and Trump had become more of a front runner.
hahaha-
but everybody can see the fnords now! (except the NPCs, of course)
enjoy:
There is truth in the words “Bomb Shell”. That is a bomb without any explosives. When ever I hear the words bomb shell, I say, “Here comes another dud.”
I purposely don’t watch the national news any more and just turn on Netflix or something else. It is all total garbage, 110% propaganda. I might as well be waking up in the morning in Moscow, Russia when that trash comes on.
I am in complete understanding that the main stream news media is there for the sole purpose of shaping public opinion. You get that fact burned into your head and you won’t be fooled by them.
I was also surprised to see reference to a meeting on a Trump EPA as early as Fall 2015. The earliest statement that I recall Trump mentioning the EPA was mid 2016. Of course since Ball doesn’t respond to his posts we’ll never find out what he’s referring to.
The standard reply to articles like this is that you are a believer in conspiracy theory which I define as something so bizarre that only someone who is somehow mentally deranged could believe in it. A conspiracy theorist is someone who refutes facts so accepted as true that they are considered irrefutable. Of course man landed on the moon. ( but wasn’t that just a movie set). Of course 6 million died in the holocaust ( name them). These facts are so entrenched that only a lunatic would deny them.
The reality is that 90% of people are honest trustworthy people. They believe what they are told whether that be from a friend or the media. Deep down they know that the media or even a friend may have an agenda but they tend to ignore the tendency to be even a little cynical. So historically propagander in any context is extremely effective. Once propositions have been established they can be difficult to refute because a believer will be drawn to listening to confirmation of that bias. In the same way that global warming believers won’t read anything that is contrary to that belief I find it difficult to read articles or listen to news that is contrary to my sceptism . I cannot listen to or watch the ABC network because I don’t want to hear a view that’s contrary. Ironically because of the mainstream media control of the climate change agenda would be impossible to change if it wasn’t for the internet. I would be no more informed that there was a sceptical side than all the believers. Historically whoever controls the media controls the agenda. That is why it is such an effective political tool. The Internet helps to make it a more even playing field. I think that one of the gullibilities that is exploited is that scientists are somehow respected, honest and hard working who spend hours upon hours proving theories with little or no financial benefit. If anything it is the scientists who may be exploited by big business . The reality is that scientists are as vulnerable to being corrupt as any other profession and will be as willing to deceive to avoid being shown to be wrong as anyone else. Even if they are proven to be wrong all the time they seem to have the capability to convince believers that either they weren’t really wrong or that they will be right the next time.
The deliberate manipulation of the worlds population in this whole AGW discussion is so obvious to anyone who sources info from anyone other than mainstream. I find it difficult to argue with people who refuse to listen. I admire the people who maintain sceptical websites such as this because it is so easy to give up because the manipulators control so many aspects of our lives. Warmists have infiltrated politics, public service, utilities, oil companies, religious and educational facilities, major corporations, scientific bodies etc.
Thank God for president Trump because without him the global trajectory regarding the damage caused by policies involving AGW alarmism would be too entrenched to reverse. Even with his presence restoring the world to some sanity in relation to this topic is still difficult ( especially in Australia).
Global warming alarmism is one of the greatest moral issues of our time and unless the sceptics win then the future of subsequent generations will be severely impacted. It represents our greatest threat to future prosperity.
Remember the ols saying, “Keep it simple stupid”.
Extreme weather is caused by climate change which is caused by global weather which is cause by too much CO2.
So prove that CO2 is a good gas and essential for all life on this planet. Now is that such a hard thing to do ?
MJE
It may be just me; but didn’t your two sentences form a non sequitur?
It is hardly difficult to prove that CO2 is a good gas and essential for life on this planet. I hope they still learn that in the 4th grade as a fundamental biological fact.
Your first sentence contains undefined terms and a presumption of a chain of causation not accepted by many readers of this site.
Remember the old saying, “Keep it simple stupid
Extreme weather is caused by climate change which is caused by global warming which is cause by too much CO2.
So prove that CO2 is a good gas and essential for all life on this planet. Now is that such a hard thing to do ?
MJE
Remember the old saying, “Keep it simple stupid
Extreme weather is caused by climate change which is caused by global warming which is cause by too much CO2.
So prove that CO2 is a good gas and essential for all life on this planet. Now is that such a hard thing to do ?
MJE
How is it even a question? When I first noticed the term “denier” it was obvious those advancing the CAGW theory were trying to link skeptics to the Holocaust denial movement as a way to delegitimize the skeptical point of view. It was just as obvious what they were doing when they switched from global warming to climate change. I didn’t need the Climategate emails to tell me that, either.
And I’m just a regular guy. But that’s what scares them. Regular people can sniff out BS. They’re pretty good at it. It’s why these clowns fight so hard and play the victim card when they’re called out for their outrageous actions.
But again, anyone who had a snot-nosed younger brother knows exactly what they’re doing, and it doesn’t fool us.
Wiki, Precautionary principle
“The precautionary principle (or precautionary approach) generally defines actions on issues considered to be uncertain, for instance applied in assessing risk management. The principle is used by policy makers to justify discretionary decisions in situations where there is the possibility of harm from making a certain decision (e.g. taking a particular course of action) when extensive scientific knowledge on the matter is lacking. ”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle
So the Precautionary principle applies if extensive scientific knowledge on the matter is lacking.
And it seems apparent to me that the greenhouse effect “theory” demonstrates extensive scientific knowledge on the matter is lacking.
One also has top climate scientists indicating there is much which is unknown and UN admitting they can’t predict future global temperature.
And they can only express their dislusional confidence as to how much warming has been caused by increased CO2 levels. And many “scientists” who are utter fools, who claim CO2 is the control knob.
The only agreement is regarding statements which will help them get more money. The agreement is limited to their bias.
So it’s a real mess, with fanciful ideas favored over simple facts.
What everyone knows or should know, is we are living in an Ice Age.
Our global climate is called an icebox climate- which is the entire ocean being cold and having polar ice caps.
A cold ocean has average temperature of 1 to 5 C.
There is no good evidence that our ocean has ever got much below 1 C and lots of evidence of ocean in the past which has warm higher than 10 C.
And our present ocean is about 3.5 C.
Everyone knows or should know that the entire ocean temperature warms or cools very slowly requiring about 1000 years to warm as much as 1 C.
Were the ocean to warm by 1 C, the ocean would expand and sea levels would increase significantly. Sea levels in last hundred years have risen by about 7″ and of that 7″ rise, about 2″ is thought to have occurred by thermal expansion of ocean [entire ocean average temperature increasing by a little bit] Or sea level rise does not indicate our oceans are warming enough to increase by 1 C within 1000 years or likely to cause meter or more sea level rise due to thermal expansion.
Or we have not left our Ice Age in last million years and we had ocean temperature within last million year reach around 5 C, and we not going to leave this Ice Age in the next 1000 years.
One might guess when we going to increase average temperature of ocean by .5 C, but public might not think it’s very important were our oceans warm from 3.5 to 4 C. And perhaps why such discussion is avoided completely.
But it would have profound effect, certainly have rising sea levels [though slow in terms of human lifespan]. And increase in global temperature- much more than we had so far. But only a .5 C increase is not going to cause ice cap to collapse- which common fear mongering. And no particular reason to assume it’s possible within a few centuries.
Anyhow due to “extensive scientific knowledge on the matter is lacking” one can say Precautionary principle applies. Or policy makers should be cautious- but they are not cautious, they are extremely reckless. And saying things they don’t even think is true to advance really silly political ideas.
Trillions of dollars tax dollar on what at best is uncertain “alternative energy” ideas. But it’s far too generous to say it’s uncertain- it’s known by all, that they don’t work and have failed already to reduce CO2 emission at all and are costly forms of electrical power [and increasing the price of electrical power is even part of the “plan”].
But it’s true, extensive scientific knowledge on the matter is lacking particularly for those making public policy. No politician has ever indicated any knowledge about it, other than those who say the obvious of it being uncertain.
And all this time I thought the modus was to declare then defend the narrative through intimidation and fear devoid of science.
I am a common man on The Street. Here is how I think. There is a descriptive sign posted at a visitor lookout point overlooking Canyon de Chelly in northeastern Arizona about 75 miles south of the Four Corners area. The region is High Desert and has snow in the winter, massive dust storms in the spring, heat in the summer and monsoons in the fall. The lands are Navajo Lands. In the fall of the year and deep in the canyon, Navajo harvest peaches. They are called Navajo Peaches. They are about the size of a small plum and their DNA carries within it 800 or more years of history. The descriptive sign tells a story in word and drawings about how 26 million years ago, long before Man, the region had enjoyed a subtropical climate. Man had nothing to do with the change.
I believe highly educated men by nature as a group are arrogant, smug creatures who have evolved believing He and only he is powerful and intelligent enough to know what is best for the rest of us; control man, beast and climate. In his attempt to do just that he devised a plan to transfer wealth from one group of men to another group of men using the “poor” as a tool. Scientific man has been willing to not be honest in order to corrupt others thinking – ideology. His plan was and is to convince the entire world pollution of men that Man has in fact created climate change and that Man must fix the problem. I think Man Made Climate Change is a hoax created to make that massive transfer of wealth possible and I think that transfer of wealth will go down in history as the largest transfer of wealth in human history and the worlds greatest scam.
I find that as time passes I am becoming more and more “pissed off” at the folks who think they are better than me because they are more educated than I may be and want to control every aspect of my life.
The good news is that I also believe there are more of “us” than there are of them and we are extremely self reliant, more than ready to vote.
I think we make a big mistake when we start aligning the theory of CO2 warming with a political agenda like Agenda 21. Such linkages may or may not be valid, but saying so leaves the door wide open to charges of conspiracy theories and are irrelevant to the actual science, and no doubt turn aside those who suspect that those on the right are ideologically driven. Stick to the science and the abuse of it; that’s enough to worry about.
I think the desire for power of one group over others can apply as much to the right wing as it does to the left. I’m equally suspicious of either side if they want me to submit to their truth.
Don132
Agenda 21 is actually available from the United Nations website:
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/Agenda21.pdf
that’s the sort of confusion you get when you use stupid labels.
right and left are stupid labels. blue and red and green are stupid labels.
individualism vs collectivism is better. or you can skip the ism: freedom vs slavery.
that makes it simple and accurate.
Great post. Thanks. I will tweet.
The power of climate science lies in the use of circular reasoning and confirmation bias. Three links below.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/10/20/the-texas-sharpshooter-fallacy/
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/05/31/the-carbon-cycle-measurement-problem/
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/08/03/confirmationbias/
Propaganda, as used today, was raised to a high art (of sorts) by Joseph Goebbels. His work has been built upon by a number of people in the west, one of the more prominent disciples was Saul Alinsky.
Propaganda does not focus on fact; it’s all about belief and perception, and (despite Abe Lincoln’s expression) fooling everyone all the time. If a lie is told often, with conviction, and built upon, it becomes fact, and in a similar way Goebbels’ approach has corrupted science—until it has become “science”.
Whatever the truth about human contributions to climate may be, we are unlikely to learn, because we no longer seek truth. Instead we are too busy spending to build a mythology, and to brand those who disagree as heretics.
Is it “science”? is it religion? Is it politics?
Yes.
The Fourth Estate has become a Fifth Column.