Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Marc Morano – NYT columnist Paul Krugman believes climate “deniers” are depraved and corrupt, because he read a book written by Michael “Hide the Decline” Mann.
The Depravity of Climate-Change Denial
Risking civilization for profit, ideology and ego.
By Paul Krugman
Opinion Columnist
Nov. 26, 2018…
Wait, isn’t depravity too strong a term? Aren’t people allowed to disagree with conventional wisdom, even if that wisdom is supported by overwhelming scientific consensus?
Yes, they are — as long as their arguments are made in good faith. But there are almost no good-faith climate-change deniers. And denying science for profit, political advantage or ego satisfaction is not O.K.; when failure to act on the science may have terrible consequences, denial is, as I said, depraved.
The best recent book I’ve read on all this is “The Madhouse Effect” by Michael E. Mann, a leading climate scientist, with cartoons by Tom Toles. As Mann explains, climate denial actually follows in the footsteps of earlier science denial, beginning with the long campaign by tobacco companies to confuse the public about the dangers of smoking.
The shocking truth is that by the 1950s, these companies already knew that smoking caused lung cancer; but they spent large sums propping up the appearance that there was a real controversy about this link. In other words, they were aware that their product was killing people, but they tried to keep the public from understanding this fact so they could keep earning profits. That qualifies as depravity, doesn’t it?
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Why would anyone go along with such things? Money is still the main answer: Almost all prominent climate deniers are on the fossil-fuel take. However, ideology is also a factor: If you take environmental issues seriously, you are led to the need for government regulation of some kind, so rigid free-market ideologues don’t want to believe that environmental concerns are real (although apparently forcing consumers to subsidize coal is fine).
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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/26/opinion/climate-change-denial-republican.html
Al Gore assured us a few weeks ago that wind turbines and solar panels are now cheaper than coal, so its a bit of a mystery why Krugman believes government regulation is required to force businesses to embrace the cheaper option.
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Currently Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York are experiencing serve cold weather.
Imagine the death rate and carnage that would have been caused if Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York were powered mainly by ‘renewable’ wind and solar.
Just imagine…
Just imagine if Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York sometime in the future, mandated renewable were to be the main power suppliers, and that citizens could ONLY drive battery powered vehicle.
Yes, just imagine.
Ridiculous, eh?
But that is what so many of your political representative wish to do. Then they could bath themselves in the glory of virtue signaling (while no doubt, scamming a profit for themselves.) The glorious virtue of killing folk to save the world! Just like the TOBACCO industry these politicos know that in adverse weather renewables are an expensive (to human health) liability
So next time you vote, listen well. Are these people wanting your vote, the murdering sociopaths/psychopaths that via promoting ‘renewables’ are actually advocating your ‘death by misadventure’ ‘engineering failure’ and many other excuses? If they are, and you do not have a death wish, avoid them, AND DON’T VOTE FOR THEM!
Seeing that Israel is surrounded by Muslim oil empires, why might the Jews that own the big banks and big media want to scare the public away from using oil? Seeing that stock market commodities like farm crops depend on the weather, why do investment bankers spend large sums of money on climate scientists? Why was the cooling trend through the 1900’s changed to a warming trend at the same time as the creation of the Chicago Climate Exchange in 2000 from which investment bankers hoped to make billions of dollars trading carbon credits?
https://youtu.be/vzGPq9LSjEw
How many billions or trillions of dollars did investment bankers lose when the nuclear industry collapsed after the accident at Three Mile Island? Why did the price of uranium, which plunged to $10/kg aftet TMI suddenly rise to $140/kg amidst the global warming propoganda? Why was Al Gore in business with the head of assett management at Goldman Sachs?
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Uranium-market-prices-1965-to-2009-Source-International-Atomic-Energy-Agency_fig11_281776277
Why does the media like to trot out experts on shrinking rulers and particles in two places at the same time when the warming and cooling is accounted for by textbook geology and highschool science?
http://www.globalcoolingcausesglobalwarming.blogspot.com
I am a climate realist and follow Joe Bastardi, it’s water vapor people. Joe says this may end soon followed by a cooling period. http://www.weatherbell.com
Typical Krugman. He starts out by making a false statement (what ordinary people call lying) and asserts it as an acknowledged fact. Then he whips up a strawman or two based on his false statement, such as accusing opponents of absurd statements that they never made, etc. Then he hauls out the nasty, saying how could any honest or moral person take such a stance (when in actuality, nobody ever did, except in his article.)
Outside of Manhattan, the man has been a pitiful joke for at least 10 years. Now he extending his field of ignorance and hatred into the climate discussion. Oh goodie.
“that wisdom is supported by overwhelming scientific consensus”
I don’t understand why people fail to recognize that the phrase “scientific consensus” is an oxymoron. A “consensus” is just a group opinion. There is nothing scientific about an opinion.
When he discusses climate (among other things), Mr. Krugman needs to take note….
“….The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts…..”.
—Bertrand Russell
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/bertrand_russell_121392
Among other realms of human knowledge today, it is sad and tragic to see science populated with fools and fanatics.
Per Krugman:
…”But there are almost no good-faith climate-change deniers.”
=================
Holy cow, how do you even parse the phrase “good-faith climate-change deniers”.
Take it a word at a time, and you could write a (another) book.
One thing that surprises me is that many of the alt media and conspiracy blogs are jumping on the AGW bandwagon. Paul Craig Roberts, Alex Jones, Stephen Lenderman, Global Research, MOA, Naked Capitalism, etc. For most of them its outside what they normally cover. I’m guess someone is throwing some money at them to get support this position. Paul Craig Roberts who has complete disdain for MSM in his first post on this topic used CNN as his main source for claiming it was True. LOL.
I read somewhere the Climate Industry is worth at least 1.5 trillion and the potential to increase by orders of magnitude should carbon tax and trading take off, and that would likely dwarf the Oil &Gas Industry . The big players in Oil&Gas will themselves grab a piece of the action as they are already interlocked with the financial sector, so their opposition to AGW is overstated IMO.
Here’s another jumper: Max Boot, a conservative columnist for WaPo, on the 26th, wrote an article reciting shallow warmist talking points titled, “I was wrong on climate change. Why can’t other conservatives admit it, too?”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/i-was-wrong-on-climate-change-why-cant-other-conservatives-admit-it-too/2018/11/26/11d2b778-f1a1-11e8-bc79-68604ed88993_story.html?utm_term=.7af0ddf3903f&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1
Maybe the Pranksters on Olympus are trying to get maximum conversion to warmism before pulling the rug out from under us all (except we happy few) with another little ice age.
With this kind of Krugman totalitarian view, I feel camps for deniers are next…
There is no consensus regarding the AGW conjecture. scientists have not been first registered than then voted on the validity of the AGW conjecture. It they had it would have been meaningless anyway. Science is not a democracy. Scientific theories are not validated through a voting process. The laws of science are not some sort of legislation. There must be something really wrong with a theory if they have to quote “consensus” as a reason to believe it.
It is my belief that mankind’s burning up the Earth’s very finite supply of fossil fuels is not a very good idea and I would like to use AGW as another reason to conserve. At first AGW seems to be quite plausible but upon closer inspection I find that the AGW conjecture is based on only partial science and cannot be defended. Based on the paleoclimate record and the work done with models, one can conclude that the climate change we have been experience is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and plenty of scientific rationale to support the idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. Its all a matter of science.
One of the biggest problems with the AGW conjecture is that it depends upon the existence of a radiant greenhouse effect caused by trace gases in the Earth’s atmosphere with LWIR absorption bands. Such a radiant greenhouse effect has not been observed in a real greenhouse, in the Earth’s atmosphere, or anywhere else in the solar system for that matter. The radiant greenhouse effect is science fiction so hence the AGW conjecture is science fiction as well. If CO2 really affected climate then one would expect that the increase in CO2 over the past 30 years would have caused at least a measurable increase in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere but that has not happened. Sure, CO2 absorbs LWIR radiation but it also radiates it out again because good absorbers are also good radiators. CO2 also transfers heat energy by conduction and convection just like all the other gases in the troposphere and in the troposphere heat transfer by convection and convection is much more important that heat energy transport by LWIR absorption band radiation. If any gases are more likely to trap heat then it would be the non-greenhouse gases that are such poor radiators to space. This is all a matter of science.
I have never worked for or have been paid by any of the energy related companies. No one is paying me to provide my opinion which is based on science.
Ol’ Shifty Eyed Krugman is at it again.
Surely depraved and corrupt is telling people the science is beyond question when simply having answers to any question you can throw at them would do wonders for belief. My demands are very simple.
Since the change is no longer global then show me a good or better still perfect match between fossil fuel usage and the hot spots. Stop convincing me you have no case in science by using terms like denier for those who are not prepared to take scientists as being above god and faith in them absolute and unquestioning. Denier with its easily provable, even if believers choose to ignore the search engine’s proof of universal limit to its use, almost only for holocaust and climate change is defamation by association and as a tactic beyond question depraved and corrupt. ( I accept it also finds use in connection with stockings but feel it is fair to discount that.)
I have a hard time understanding why these people are so incredibly confident about a temperature residual that is barely discernible from the data — and projecting from the short amount of data we have to extrapolation points a hundred years away. I get that Mann is confident that the climate never varies by much and that somehow that justifies every bone headed policy that anyone wants a tax to support?!
I look at this data and so much of it is just noise. There is very little in the way of patterns to discern unless you look at the data just right — but by that measure you can also get data that makes it look like there is no overall trend. Most of this looks like the effects of urbanization. I have seen temperature sets from stations in rural areas and they do not seem to indicate a change beyond noise.
How can they have a level of confidence about this to demand worldwide change? This is especially true when you consider the fact that increasing the standard of living by using energy will end up decreasing birthrates in the developing world by increasing education and access to contraception.
Where does this psychotic level of self righteousness come from?
Bullfeathers! For two years now I’ve notice cooler temperatures. That shouldn’t be happening . . . first off, if I’m noticing cooler temperatures, which I never have before, there’s probably something to it . . . yet I still see claims of ‘warmest year ever!’ Secondly, we’re coming out of an interglacial . . . we should expect it to get colder . . . slowly but inevitably colder probably at varying rates. Man certainly isn’t going to cancel out the natural cycle of glaciers/interglacials. The Warmists are desperate to keep the scam going . . . gullible people are their source of political power in the same way Democrats need poor people dependent on government to get elected. That’s the real weakness of Democracy, people can be scammed. Krugman is full of it which anyone should be able to see with their own eyes.