Guest gainsaying by David Middleton
From E&E News (which really should be renamed ?&E News because their articles are rarely relevant to energy):
WHITE HOUSE
Every president since JFK was warned about climate change
Benjamin Hulac, E&E News reporter Climatewire: Tuesday, November 6, 2018
John F. Kennedy was warned about “climate control” in February 1961, becoming perhaps the first American president to learn about people’s impact on planetary temperatures.
The warnings never stopped. Every president since then has been exposed to similar scientific findings. Sometimes it was called “climatic change,” other times it was “air pollution.”
[…]
Mr. Hulac was doing just fine up until JFK and then the wheels came off. He was apparently relying on snippets of documents from the Climate Kiddies’ lawsuit.
- Every president since JFK was warned about climate change.
- No… Every President since JFK was *not* warned about climate change.
President John F. Kennedy Was Not Warned About Climate Change
Senator Clinton Anderson (D-NM) “warned” JFK that Godless Red Hordes might attack these tangentially United States with ice ages and hurricanes. Senator Anderson was otherwise quite sane for a Democrat, pro-space program and pro-nuclear power…
Anderson’s main accomplishment as a senator was being one of the most outspoken proponents of the space program. He was instrumental in gaining funding for the program while chairing the Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences from 1963 to 1973. As chairman of the committee during the most active period of space explorationand the most important time of the space race, Anderson held a key policymaking role in Washington, not to mention the purse strings for NASA.
Anderson sponsored the final wilderness bill, which passed the Senate by a vote of 73-12 on April 9, 1963, passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 373-1 on July 30, 1964, and it was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on September 3, 1964. Richard McArdle, chief of the Forest Service from 1952-1962, remarked, “Without Clinton Anderson there would have been no Wilderness Law.”[3] Anderson is also known for the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act.
He also served as chairman of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (84th and 86th Congresses), Joint Committee on Construction of Building for Smithsonian (84th–92nd), Joint Committee on Navaho-Hopi Indians (84th–92nd), Special Committee on Preservation of Senate Records (85th and 86th, Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs (87th and 88th), Special Committee on National Fuel Policy (87th).
President Lyndon B. Johnson Was Not Warned About Climate Change
The paragraph above was from a 300+ page book, Restoring the Quality of our Environment. The section on carbon dioxide is quite interesting…
Section I. CARBON DIOXIDE FROM FOSSIL
INVISIBLE POLLUTANTINTRODUCTION
Only about one two-thousandth of the atmosphere and one ten- thousandth of the ocean are carbon dioxide. Yet to living creatures, these small fractions are of vital importance. Carbon is the basic building block of organic compounds, and land plants obtain all of their carbon from atmospheric carbon dioxide. Marine plants obtain carbon from the dissolved carbon dioxide in sea water, which depends for its concentration on an equilibrium with the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere. Marine and terrestrial animals, including man, procure, either directly or indirectly, the substance of their bodies and the energy for living from the carbon compounds made by plants.
All fuels used by man consist of carbon compounds produced by ancient or modern plants. The energy they contain was originally solar energy, transmuted through the biochemical process called photosynthesis. The carbon in every barrel of oil and every lump of coal, as well as in every block of limestone, was once present in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.
Over the past several billion years, very large quantities of carbon dioxide have entered the atmosphere from volcanoes. The total amount was at least forty thousand times the quantity of carbon dioxide now present in the air. Most of it became combined with calcium or magnesium, freed by the weathering of silicate rocks, and was precipitated on the seafloor as limestone or dolomite. About one-fourth of the total\ quantity, at least ten thousand times the present atmospheric carbon dioxide, was reduced by plants to organic carbon compounds and became buried as organic matter in the sediments. A small fraction of this — organic matter was transformed into the concentrated deposits we call. coal, petroleum, oil shales, tar sands, or natural gas. These are the fossil fuels that power the world?wide industrial civilization of our time.
Throughout most of the half-million years of man’s existence on earth, his fuels consisted of wood and other remains of plants which had grown only a few years before they were burned. The effect of this the content of atmospheric carbon dioxide was negligible,only speeded up the natural decay processes that continually recycle carbon from the biosphere to the atmosphere. During the last centuries, however, man has begun to burn the fossil fuels that locked in the sedimentary rocks over five hundred million years, and this combustion is measurably increasing the atmospheric carbon dioxide.
In the geologic past, the quantity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was determined by the equilibrium between rates of weathering and and the rate of injection of volcanic carbon dioxide. On an earthwide average, both weathering and photosynthesis must speed up when the carbon dioxide content of the air is increased, and slow down when it is diminished; consequently, over geologic time the carbon dioxide in the air must have risen when volcanic activity was high, and must have gone down when volcanoes were quiescent. On a human scale, the times involved are very long. The known amounts of limestone and organic carbon in the sediments indicate that the atmospheric carbon dioxide has been changed forty thousand times during the past four billion years, consequently the residence time of carbon in the atmosphere, relative to sedimentary rocks, must be of the order of a hundred thousand years.
The present rate of production of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion is about a hundred times the average rate of release of calcium and magnesium from the weathering of silicate rocks. As long as this ratio holds, precipitation of metallic carbonates will be unable to maintain an unchanging content of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Within a few short centuries, we are returning to the air a significant part of the carbon that was slowly extracted by plants and buried in the sediments during half a billion years.
Not all of this added carbon dioxide will remain in the air. Part of it will become dissolved in the ocean, and part will be taken up by the biosphere, chiefly in trees and other terrestrial plants, and in the dead plant litter called humus. The part that remains in the atmosphere may have a significant effect on climate: carbon dioxide is nearly transparent to visible light, but it is a. strong absorber and back radiator of infrared radiation, particularly in the wave from 12 to 18 microns; consequently, an increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide could act, much like the glass in a greenhouse, to raise the temperature of the lower air. [Water vapor also absorb-s infrared radiation, both in the range of the CO2; band centered at 15 microns, and at wave near 6.3 microns. With the average concentration of water vapor in the lower air at mid latitudes, the effect of carbon dioxide absorption is reduced to about half that which would exist in an absolutely dry atmosphere. (Möller, 1963.) Ozone, which is an important constituent of the upper air, also absorbs some infrared at wave around 9.6 microns, but its principal effect on air temperature is due to its absorption of ultraviolet and visible sunlight]
The possibility of climatic change resulting from changes in the quantity of atmospheric carbon dioxide was proposed independently by the American geologist, T. C. Chamberlain (1899) and the Swedish chemist, S. Arrhenius (1903), at the beginning of this century. Since their time, many scientists have dealt with one or another aspect of this question, but until very recently there was little quantitative information about what has actually happened. Even today, we cannot make a useful prediction concerning the magnitude or nature of the possible climatic effects.But we are able to say a good deal more than formerly about the change in the quantity of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and about the partition of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion among the atmosphere, the ocean, and the biosphere.
I’m working on putting together a readable version of the rest of this document. But two things stand out:
- “Even today, we cannot make a useful prediction concerning the magnitude or nature of the possible climatic effects” is not a warning.
- LBJ knew what Exxon Knew (Möller, 1963)
Among the many #Exxon Knew documents was this gem…
Well, being a scientist, a sedimentary geologist to be more specific, I was curious. So I looked up Möller (1963) and found the abstract to this seminal publication…
On the influence of changes in the CO2 concentration in air on the radiation balance of the Earth’s surface and on the climate
F. Möller
Abstract
The numerical value of a temperature change under the influence of a CO2 change as calculated by Plass is valid only for a dry atmosphere. Overlapping of the absorption bands of CO2 and H2O in the range around 15 μ essentially diminishes the temperature changes. New calculations give ΔT = + 1.5° when the CO2 content increases from 300 to 600 ppm. Cloudiness diminishes the radiation effects but not the temperature changes because under cloudy skies larger temperature changes are needed in order to compensate for an equal change in the downward long-wave radiation. The increase in the water vapor content of the atmosphere with rising temperature causes a self-amplification effect which results in almost arbitrary temperature changes, e.g. for constant relative humidity ΔT = +10° in the above mentioned case. It is shown, however, that the changed radiation conditions are not necessarily compensated for by a temperature change. The effect of an increase in CO2 from 300 to 330 ppm can be compensated for completely by a change in the water vapor content of 3 per cent or by a change in the cloudiness of 1 per cent of its value without the occurrence of temperature changes at all. Thus the theory that climatic variations are effected by variations in the CO2 content becomes very questionable.
This was priceless!!! So I spent $6 to rent the paper for 48 hours. Here are some highlights:
In this case, we must distinguish between the assumptions that the water vapor content (in cm l.e.) remains unchanged in spite of heating (cooling) of the atmosphere and that it increases (decreases). Constant absolute humidity means that the relative humidity (f) decreases from 75 to 70.34 per cent with a 1° or lowered by 4.66 per cent per deg. According to the above-mentioned calculations, an increase in CO2 from 300 to 600 ppm gives us a temperature change ΔT = +1.5° for Δf = -4.66 per cent per deg, and a temperature change ΔT = +9.6° for Δf = 0.
[…]
We recognize that for Δf = 0.8 per cent per deg the temperature change becomes infinite. Very small variations effect a reversal of sign or huge amplifications.
It is not too difficult to infer from these numbers that the variation in the radiation budget from a changed CO2 concentration can be compensated for completely without any variation in the surface temperature when the cloudiness is increased by +0.006 or the water vapor content is decreased by -0.07 cm l.e.
[…]
These are variations in the cloudiness by 1 per cent of its value or in the water vapor content by 3 per cent of its value. No meteorologist or climatologist would dare to determine the mean cloudiness or mean water content of the atmosphere with such accuracy; much less can a change of this order of magnitude be proved or its existence denied. Because of these values the entire theory of climatic changes by CO2 variations is becoming questionable.
So, way back in 1965, ExxonMobil and LBJ knew exactly what we know today:
The entire theory of climatic changes by CO2 variations is questionable.
President Richard M. Nixon Was Not Warned About Climate Change
Pollution ≠ Climate Change
President Gerald R. Ford Was Not Warned About Climate Change
“We don’t know… So we’re going to measure some things”… is not warning. And it is reassuring to know that the government of these somewhat United States was not giving any serious attention to Dr. Evil type stuff in the 1970’s.
President James E. Carter Was Not Warned About Climate Change
“We need more money”… is not a warning.
President Ronald W. Reagan Was Not Warned About Climate Change
The Precautionary Principle is not a warning and it’s fracking moronic to boot. The possibility that climate change could have taken us back to the Eemian or back to the Wisconsin… is how we got from the Eemian to the Wisconsin to the Holocene. However greenhouse gas emissions haven’t taken us anywhere outside of Holocene norms; nor is it likely to.
No Eemian for you!
And no Wisconsin for you!
President George H. W. Bush Was Not Warned About Climate Change
He wrote a note to himself, reminding himself to talk about it… “Read my lips… No new climate change!”
President William J. Clinton Was Not Warned About Climate Change
WTF is this?
President George W. Bush Was Not Warned About Climate Change
He politely told proponents of the Kyoto Protocol to go to HELL!
President Barack H. Obama Didn’t Need to Be Warned
He didn’t need to be warned about climate change… He constantly annoyed us with warnings about it.
Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous. Read more: http://t.co/4lEEBYtVqf
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) May 16, 2013
Not quite…
96% of atmospheric scientists agree climate change is real. 67% agree that it’s at least 50% man-made, 38-50% agree that it has been or will be dangerous and 41% think we can ignore it. President “Trump thinks scientists are split on climate change”… He’s right, Dana Nuccitelli is wrong
President Donald J. Trump Was Apparently Handed a Bar Chart
A bar chart prepared by by the folks who find only what they shine a light on…
2.25 Wm-2… Two-point-two-five Watts per meter squared… Makes me think of this classic Highland Appliance store commercial from the 80’s…
“Fifty watts per channel, babycakes!”
Two-point-two-five Watts per meter squared from 1750-2011… Is that a lot? Not really.
Top pic: top-of-atmosphere (TOA). Bottom pic: downwards, at the surface. Note that this data is from a climate model, not observation. The difference is accounted for by atmospheric absorption and reflection. William M. Connolley using HadCM3 data., Wikipedia.
It’s a safe bet that Mr. Connolley would not endorse my use of his image.
The RCP2.6 scenario reflects 2.6 Wm-2 of additional radiative forcing in 2100 relative to preindustrial times. The RCP2.6 spaghetti strands are near the bottom of the spaghetti plot, along with UAH 6.0…
Spaghetti plot from Climate Lab Book. UAH 6.0 from Wood For Trees.
Conclusions
None of the examples provided by Mr. Hulac constitute evidence that any presidents since JFK were warned about climate change. It’s mind-boggling to think that these snippets are “evidence” in the Climate Kiddies’ lawsuit against the U.S. government. Unlike, most of my critiques of stupid and/or ignorant articles on climate change, the recognition of the fact that these were not warnings about climate change does not require any scientific expertise… Just basic reading skills.
Mr. Hulac appears to have an educational background consistent with decent reading skills:
- Columbia University – Graduate School of Journalism, Master’s Degree, Journalism, 2013 – 2014
- Lehigh University, Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), StudyPolitical Science and Journalism, 2009 – 2013
How could he possibly have misconstrued these snippets as evidence that every president since JFK had been warned about climate change?
An even more perplexing question… How could the plaintiffs’s attorneys in Juliana v. United States or any judge with reading skills of at least a fifth-grader misconstrue these snippets as some sort of actionable evidence in a public trust doctrine lawsuit?
I can’t wait for the Climate Kiddies’ lawsuit to reach the Supreme Court.
On October 22, 2018, plaintiffs filed their response, requesting that the trial be permitted to start as scheduled the next week.[40][41]. On October 24, Judge Aiken filed an order vacating the trial start date of October 29 and placing a hold on the rest of the trial schedule.[42] On November 2, the Supreme Court (by a 7-2 vote) denied the government’s request for a writ of mandamus and vacated the stay, because the government could still be granted pretrial relief from the Ninth Circuit.[43][44] In its order, the court noted that, even though the Ninth Circuit had already denied the government’s request for relief twice, the reasons supporting its denials on the prior occasions “are, to a large extent, no longer pertinent.”[45] Plaintiffs’ counsel stated that they would request the trial begin the week of November 12;[44] however, the order was issued without prejudice, leaving open the possibility that the case could return to the Supreme Court again prior to trial, depending upon the actions taken by the Ninth Circuit.[45]
SCOTUS denied the writ of mandamus because the Ninth Circuit might actually still toss out this moronic lawsuit. The denial was “without prejudice,” meaning that SCOTUS is willing to revisit the mandamus issue if the Ninth Circuit continues to act like the Ninth Circus…
I followed the SCO vs. The World lawsuits for a decade on Groklaw.
I learned one thing. Nobody, even lawyers, can predict the outcome of court cases with certainty. The good guys may win in the end but they may never recover the damages done to them in the process.
I miss Groklaw… at the end, it was branching out into covering other technology-related litigation such as patent-law cases, some of which were every bit as hokey as SCO’s case was.
Fully agree. People should be aware of the laws and the legal system that governs them. Otherwise, special interests grab the levers of power and the politicians are too clueless to see what’s happening.
I’m one of those who thinks a decent legal system is necessary for civilization. We’ve seen tin pot dictators go after judges and lawyers. The Shakespeare line “Kill all the lawyers” expresses the frustration of a would-be tyrant.
Yes, we do need a strong legal system, but Japan shows we do not need anything like the number of lawyers we do have. Japanese laws are written for people, not lawyers. Most disputes are settled outside a courtroom. Social pressure (to be honest, well behaved and treat all fairly and decently) acts as a far better regulator of behaviour than does a host of overpaid lawyers.
We have much to learn form them.
Where you have a predominant culture, you need fewer laws because most people abide by social convention. If you have a multicultural society, things have to be spelled out and that leads to a proliferation of laws. link.
Japan really hates immigration. Most Japanese would rather have their aged mother cared for by a robot than by a kindly filipena.
Isn’t “let’s kill all the lawyers”
the Bottom line?
I am still shocked how it is supposedly warmer today than in either 1988 or 1989 when I was working outside across the state of MN. It was so hot that we stopped working at 10am. The drought was awful in central MN that year with corn stocks that only grew a foot high and turned brown. Every time I see these graphs I remain skeptical of the outward slop of temperature. I guess it must be a lot warmer elsewhere now.
A curse is “May you be in the right in a legal case”!
As always, David, your posts are a great, and thoroughly enjoyable, read. It always fascinates me that these people seem to have forgotten the facts about their incessant “boy cries wolf” stories. New Ice Age, atmospheric pollution, ozone hole, global warming, climate change, plastics…..not to mention, insecticides, air fresheners, meat, modern agricultural methods, etc. etc. etc. They just NEVER give up while simultaneously ignoring the fact that, most everywhere, things continue to improve.
Less poverty, less famines, drastic falls in atmospheric levels of a vast array of pollutants (e.g. NOx, SOx, Lead [Pb] to name only a few), wider access to fresh water and electricity and significant increases in human longevity. Take practically any metric of human well-being and they have all improved tremendously thanks to the wealth generation and technology developments that have arisen thanks to the industrial revolution and access to cheap, reliable energy. When you throw in the increases in crop productivity thanks to CO2 and, perhaps, a slight natural warming of the planet, what’s not to like? Go figure!
Phil
As usual I read David’s post’s assiduously, I rarely understand the science because I’m not a scientist although I grasp the general gist.
What keeps me going is the image of David chuckling and giggling his way through the decimation of alarmist claims.
He’s probably not, a lot of work goes into every post, but it keeps me entertained.. 🙂
Thanks as ever David, much appreciated.
If I can’t inject humor into something, there’s no point in doing it.
These posts usually start off with me reading an article and saying to myself, “That’s the most frackingly stupid thing I have ever read… since yesterday”… Sometimes I even write these sorts of posts before I even read past the headline.
I was actually typing out: President (fill in the blank) Was Not Warned About Climate Change” before I scrolled down to the next image.
Great work David, thank you.
Suggested correction:
“So, way back in 1965, ExxonMobil and LBJ knew exactly what we know today:
The entire theory of climatic changes CAUSED by CO2 variations is NONSENSE.”
Allan… The cool thing is that I was quoting it verbatim… 😎
Phil,
“It always fascinates me that these people seem to have forgotten the facts about their incessant “boy cries wolf” stories.”
It never fascinates me. They haven’t forgotten; their target audience has.
In fact the wolf-criers are always learning from their wrongness. This is what they’ve learned so far: they can get away with it.
(Scientists call this the Ehrlich Effect.)
But all the benefits you list don’t enrich the right people. They help the “rest of us”, not just the elites.
IPCC official, Ottmar Edenhofer, speaking in November 2010: “But one must say clearly that we redistribute, de facto, the world’s wealth by climate policy. … one has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute, de facto, the world’s wealth…” “This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy, anymore.” http://www.nzzDOTch/aktuell/startseite/klimapolitik-verteilt-das-weltvermoegen-neu-1.8373227
The Space Race has been replaced by the Carbon Scare Tax Race and both are expensive. Hint: We are still paying for WWII, the Space Race, and Great Society.
The latest Carbon Tax Scare Race is in part an acknowledgement in the cloak room that a major new revenue source is needed and is probably more feasible than a VAT tax in the U.S. It has already been decided and the armies of the nonprofits have been mobilized. Debate has ended, at least among the deciders.
If “every president since JFK was warned about climate change”, shouldn’t the kiddos be suing the USA? Heck, how about suing Trump for refusing to “fight climate change”? I mean, the sky’s the limit.
Better yet, JFK was being warned of an impending Ice Age which apparently solved itself when we started warming in 1978 as we passed the bottom of the latest cold cycle and headed to the top of the warm part of the cycle. Now that we have passed the warm peak in1998, we had a typical temperature plateau for about ten years, just was in 1958-1948, and now we are cooling.
I think they are suing the U.S. government. That’s why it’s important to say “the government was warned.” The suit wants some judge to direct the U.S. government to fall in line with IPCC.
WU evaluates the election, mostly about carbon tax and renewables. I think that they are warning the government about climate change.
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Midterm-Election-Roundup-How-Did-Climate-and-Environment-Fare?cm_ven=cat6-widget
“As more states ramp up the fraction of renewables in their electric grids, this could make a significant dent over time in the nation’s carbon footprint and its contribution to human-produced climate change throughout the world.” Be careful what you wish for, apparently lost to human history.
Hulac (?) should have started with the Christopher Columbus’ warning to the native Americans that he could control the havens by promptly arranging for a moon eclipse event.
It appears that some of the american presidents are not going to be fooled that easy.
A classic Jungle Jim episode…
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047747/episodes
David,
Did you leave out the word “photosynthesis” in the middle of the 2nd paragraph?
David, I should have said the 2nd paragraph of the quote from the book, ” Restoring the Quality of our Environment.”
For some reason, the word photosynthesis was not picked up in the text version at least twice.
The text file I was copying from left it out. I thought I fixed it… D’Oh!
Maybe they were too busy trying to prevent water wetness.
I want to know how Americans can sleep at night, having failed—for three generations and counting—to lift a finger to stop continental drift, or any of its aliases.
What did you know, and when did you know it, America?
Don’t tell me you weren’t warned. The science has been clear since 0AD, according to a new analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls by Naomi Oreskes which finds no “credible” refutations of plate tectonics.
Senator Clinton Anderson (D-NM) reminds us of a time when Democrats were loyal and patriotic Americans.
I saw Senator Anderson speak in the Senate in May (?) 1958—along with H. Humphrey and a 3rd Senator, who conducted a 3-way conversation—when he was opposing Eisenhower’s nomination of Lewis Strauss to be head of the AEC. He believed Strauss had misled the Senate about radiation dangers or fallout levels in his testimony to a Senate Committee and was on the warpath about it. Anderson was very impressive—effortlessly coherent and on top of his subject in response to questions from the other two. I read in the newspapers then that he was one of the ten members of the Senate’s inner circle, and the he had an IQ of 150. I could well believe it.
Oops: I was mistaken in two regards, as I learned from checking the Wikipedia entry on Anderson, namely:
The post to which Ike nominated Strauss was Secretary of Commerce; his previous job had been as head of the AEC. The date of Anderson’s speeches in the senate on the matter was June 1959.
This lawsuit must be intended as comical entertainment for the judicial branch of government.
What. A. Total. Friggin. Joke.
Let us now sue the U. S. Department of Agriculture for introducing and promoting eating habits that cause the needless suffering and death of countless animals. #AnimalsLivesMatter
Let us sue all adults who have children, knowingly bringing them into a world where CO2 will make their lives living hell. This clearly is irresponsible family planning. #stophavingbabbies
[ The possibility of climatic change resulting from changes in the quantity of atmospheric carbon dioxide was proposed independently by the American geologist, T. C. Chamberlain (1899) and the Swedish chemist, S. Arrhenius (1903), at the beginning of this century. Since their time, many scientists have dealt with one or another aspect of this question, but until very recently there was little quantitative information about what has actually happened. ]
In the early ’60’s they reference two independent ‘proposals’ from 1899 and 1903, from which no scientific advancement was made. Fifty years later there has still been no scientific advancement on these ‘proposals’.
If these ‘proposals’ were not valid there would be no scientific advancement. The fact that there has been no scientific advancement does not necessarily prove the proposals are not valid. However …
Have there been any other scientific advancements over the last 120 years?
Science will never advance in the face of dogma and authoritarian insistence. In a sense, the only true scientists are those trying to prove the CAGW hypothesis wrong.
Thomas,
that’s the exasperating thing, isn’t it? Any other field of science is expected, by definition, to incrementally add to our understanding of nature. That’s not the whole definition, obviously, but it IS a minimum condition for anything purporting to be science.
But not climate science. Climate science is allowed to burn unthinkable time and money GETTING NOWHERE, with impunity.
And nobody thinks, hey, maybe it’s time to put this joke of a science out of our misery.
Thanks Brad – exasperating indeed!
David,
Should the ‘Kiddy Komplaint’ actually make it to court for serious consideration, I’d like to encourage you to submit a Friend of the Court brief for the judge to consider.
Now I understand the climate change crowd – “to annoy others….”
We are living through the counter revolution.
There genuinely was a cultural revolution in the sixties in America, and to some extent also in Europe. But revolutions have a limited life, and there is invariably a restoration. In the UK it only took 20 years – 1640 – 1660. In France it took from about 1790 to 1815. In Russia it was longer, 1918 – 1990.
However, the political restoration is rarely the end of the story. The cultural struggle continues for much longer and the restorations of cultural values occurs much later, and is followed by continued struggles before there is a dying down of the waves. So we see the final ending of the UK story only in 1688, about 50 years after the original revolution, and the last wave of Jacobite rebellion was not until 1745. In France perhaps the resolution was only reached finally in 1870 after Louis Napoieon’s coup and fall. In Russia we are still working through a resolution.
So, dating the start of the US cultural revolution to about 1965 or so, we are now in the restoration phase. The swing to the right probably has some ways left to go. We will end up with a culture which curiously resembles that of 1955. Self declaration of gender, post-modernism, global warming, cheerful promiscuity, gay marriage, identity politics, will all suddenly fade from memory.
Did I say there will be no more post-modernism? Well there will not be. The names of Lacan, Derrida, Foucault etc will not bring even a smile of recognition. Deconstruction will mean demolition of unwanted buildings. Life will become dull. Everyone will suddenly start wearing coats and ties, and the ladies will dress with what will seem, to anyone who remembers today, surprising modesty.
As Yeats said (from memory): One day it was 1900, and no-one went mad anymore, no-one drank absinthe or converted to Roman Catholicism…
That is how it will be. One day quite soon you will walk out of your door and meet your neighbour and mention global warming. He or she will look at you in puzzlement, and ask ‘what’s that?’.
The question is whether the pointless and endless wars will still continue. I suspect not and hope not, but am prepared for disappointment.
No, it didn’t start in the 1960s. The counter cultural revolution, such as this may be in the USA, began before Jefferson and Adams died. That’s right, it started in the 1800s. One result of this was the War Between the States. That prompted a restoration, for about 30 years. That resulted in resumption of the counter revolution in the 1890s. There was a brief respite of a restoration in the 1920s, the 1950s, the 1980s, and now.
Given human nature, there will be wars until human nature gets changed; and that’s something humans can’t do on their own.
Here is an entertaining review from the NYTimes in 1976 of The Genesis Strategy (Stephen Schneider). It discusses the then “consensus of the climatological community” that the cold weather that damaged crops in 1972, 1974, and 1975 are going to become more frequent and extreme. We are told that, “The climate is going to get unreliable. It is going to get cold. Harvest failures and regional famines will be more frequent.”
We are also told that, “The last 200 years have been unusually warm when compared to the last 1,000. But there is considerable evidence that this warm period is passing and that temperatures on the whole will get colder. For example, in the last 100 years mid‐latitude air temperatures peaked at an all‐time warm point in the 1940’s and‐have been cooling ever since.”
To those fools who might at the time have pointed out the general failure of long term weather prediction, we are told that, “Climatologists cannot predict what temperatures we will experience in 1984 (just as an insurance executive cannot predict when John Doe will die). But they can predict what temperature averages and extremes to expect over the next 10, 20, or 30 years (just as the Insurance executive can say how many American males will die between now and December). And they are predicting greater fluctuations, and a cooling trend for the northern hemisphere.”
Most ominously, we learn that, “In 1974 Schneider and [Reid] Bryson tried to explain to a White House policy‐making group why conditions are likely to worsen [i.e. get colder]. One of the most depressing anecdotes in the book is Schneider’s description of the deaf ear their warnings received.”
So, White House policy makers got a clear warning in 1974 of the climatological consensus on imminent global cooling that is sure to occur the late 20th century and its many associated horrors, and the fools simply turned a deaf ear. Surely, now that we shiver hungry in the cold, history is judging those policy makers harshly for their folly! And can we sue?!!!
https://www.nytimes.com/1976/07/18/archives/the-genesis-strategy-a-chilling-prospect.html
That’s priceless!
Said another way, They’ve been whining about this as long as i’ve been alive (60yrs), Done nothing and all is well.
The idea isn’t to prove a case. It’s to present a case. Then the judge can make a non-democratic policy decision that forces the other branches to follow the favored policy.
Excellent article. Thanks.
If you haven’t already, then you owe it to yourself to read some of the claims of the original case document:
https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/s/YouthAmendedComplaintAgainstUS-t9f3.pdf
Where it describes each plaintiff, his/her lifestyle/habits/etc. … is sickening — a self-indulgent, self-righteous pity fest, based on false information.
Just pathetic !
Oh yeah? Nine years, that is, since he was six. Clever little ankle-biter.
Xiuhtezcatl Tonatiuh M., by and through his guardian and mother Tamara Roske-Martinez, is a 15-year-old citizen of the U.S. For nine years, Xiuhtezcatl has advocated for reductions in CO2 emissions before local, state, federal, and international governmental bodies, including three speeches before the United Nations…
In a spirit of self-flagellation I continued to read the “bios” of all the plaintiffs, amazingly without being physically sick. The document is a masterpiece of creative writing liberally laced with irrelevant non-sequitors that raised many sceptical chuckles. If this ever comes to trial, the defence should cross-examine every single plaintiff.
What struck me forcibly was that nearly every one suffers from asthma and/or other (unspecified) allergies yet claiming to indulge in physically-demanding sports and pastimes.
Now Google each plaintiff’s name to get some background on each of them. After doing this, you will be completely convinced that this group of “kids” has no science-based clue whatsoever about what they are doing. Rather, they are politically amped up eco-activists all collected together into one big eco-activist assault team, whose sole aim is to be an activist political force for the sake of it.
They have become so enamored with the actions of the “fight” that they have no means whatsoever in their minds to pursue the facts that would give their fight any rational standing in reality. They are fighting for the sake of fighting. That’s all. And they use organized irrationality as an excuse to continue.
Yes, the kids are willing human shields in the climate war. The suit is brought on their behalf by Our Children’s Trust, with the usual adult suspects driving the legal maneuver.
James “Death Trains” Hansen
Ove “Reefer Mad” Hoegh-Guldberg
Jonathan “Water Torture” Overpeck
Camille “The Extincter” Parmeson
Stefan “No Tommorow” Rahmstorf
Kevin “Hidden Heat” Trenberth
And so on.
The kids will live to regret this.
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2016/06/23/climate-war-human-shields/
The big thing to hope for is that the Supreme Court might unscrew the pooch that is Article III standing after Massachusetts vs. EPA. Speculative future harms that the defendant can do bupkess about do not give a plaintiff standing and the court really needs to clear up that charlie-foxtrot.
Yes. The gaping hole in all these suits is that if there is a problem, the US is a very small contributor to it. 5 billion tons a year out of 37 billion globally. Even were the plaiintiffs to win, and if the US in reply banned all fossil fuel use immediately, and even if the theory were right, the effects on global temperatures would be, according to the theory, negligible.
This is exactly like the Supreme Court of Tuvalu ordering the Tuvalu government to put a stop to fossil fuel use in Tuvalu to prevent sea level rise. Well, not exactly like. But just as futile.
Anyone seen this? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364682618305030?fbclid=IwAR2K7rMBEtRzuI7e0covP9r5vYr79lak–HnAAQWq0kRN7kT4xW-pouYpfQ
No tropospheric hotspot! So no telltale CO2 fingerprints on the murder weapon! Aaarghh!
Oh dear! Could the “settled science” and “97% consensus” theory of CAGW be wrong? I see a light at the end of the tunnel! Brilliant! Thanks, Dennis!
You’re welcome!
Love it. Thanks.
Dude – are you from Detroit? Most stores were near Detroit in the VERY early 80s when that commercial was current.
Looking at the chart showing results of decisions by all the District Courts, one is led to wonder why they even exist?
The best court in the land could only muster 40% of it’s decisions accepted by a higher court on appeal. Flipping a coin would have been much cheaper, & more accurate, to boot!
Perhaps the climate kiddies could step us through all the failed alarmist predictions since JFK and explain to us how this time its different; or maybe worse than we thought even.
Another epic essay by David.
This’ll be shared on evil Facebook.
Thank you thank you . . .
The law suit is just a massive Begging the Question fallacy.
Let’s say I am president and I am told a bad thing is going to happen and cost $1 billion in damages. I say what will it cost to prevent it happening? $1.1 billion. I don’t take any action.
Economics is the study of trade-offs – everything I do means there is something I cannot do. The children have to show that they gave some right that is being abrogated (which they do not) or that the non-action clearly costs more than the action that could have been taken. But the non-action costs are unknown. They just assume they will be.
Thanks David. Like all conspiracy theorists, the warmists have to answer the question: if the problem is as bad as you say, why are responsible people doing nothing about it, accompanied by more or less contemptible lip service? They struggle for answers:
1. Big oil big business all they care about is profits blah blah. On the contrary: Exxon did a great job of researching the issue, and they certainly know how to get along with big government, tell politicians what they want to hear, etc., but: do they think or know (in secret) that the sky is falling because of man-made CO2? No.
2. Big government caters to big business and/or wants to reassure people that things are fine. On the contrary: Big government has poured rivers of money on the warmists, and they get a virtually worthless product, marbled with bullshit, in return.
3. Governments have all known for years, etc. So to explain a big cover-up, insist that it’s even bigger. Don’t you see? Everyone with power is in on it! That’s how big it is!
They’re not crazy enough to sacrifice their own way of life, including jet travel, but they are certainly willing to harm the economy and just dumb down science in general. Is it more a matter of ignorance or dishonesty? Hard to tell.
Well said, Lloyd. I’m not sure that “ignorance” in the penultimate sentence is the correct word. But that’s just nit-picking.
I know that Benjamin Franklin was never elected or even ran for President but he was one of our Founding Fathers.
Did the Klimate Kase Kids also claim that he was warned about flying a kite in a thunderstorm?
(Probably not. They probably never heard of him.)