It is little wonder that kids are scared when grown-ups paint such a horrific picture of global warming.
For starters, leading politicians and much of the media have prioritized climate change over other issues facing the planet. Last September, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres described climate change as a “direct existential threat” that may become a “runaway” problem. Just last month, The New York Times ran a front-page commentary on the issue with the headline “Time to Panic.” And some prominent politicians, as well as many activists, have taken the latest report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to suggest the world will come to an end in just 12 years.
This normalization of extreme language reflects decades of climate-change alarmism.
Read more in my latest article for Project Syndicate: http://ow.ly/esXK50nrxfs
Thanks for posting this intro, Anthony. The full post was worth the read.
Regards,
Bob
I disagree.
Lomborg is pathetic,
like most “lukewarmers”.
His article at the link
is science-free,
and data free,
except for quoting a
few meaningless wild guesses
of future climate change
damage, that are not worth
the paper they are printed on !
Lomborg writes:
“Yes, global warming is a problem,
but it is nowhere near a catastrophe.”
I challenge Lomborg, or anyone
‘here, to clearly explain how global
warming has been a problem so far.
(a problem caused by actual warming,
not the problems caused by foolish
responses, to misguided fears,
about future global warming)
There has been warming for
hundreds of years,
since the late 1600’s
during the Maunder Minimum.
We have 300+ years of experience
with global warming.
So, who has been hurt
by that 300+ years
of global warming ?
.
.
.
I realize there has been
virtually no warming
since 2003, to the end
of 2018, per UAH weather
satellite data.
You’d think Lomborg
might mention that too ?
And how about mentioning
that haphazard surface
measurements, since 1940,
reflect about +0.6 degrees C.
of global warming in those
78 years — less than
+0.1 degrees C. per decade.
With no evidence global
warming is accelerating,
and actual evidence it is
decelerating (since 2003),
there’s no logical reason to
expect more than +0.1 degrees C.
of warming in the next 10 years.
Or maybe -0.1 degrees C. cooling?
That’s no “existential threat” !
.
.
Lomborg should have emphasized
that no one knows the future climate.
That’s proven by over 30 years
of very wrong computer climate
model predictions.
You’d think Lomborg
might have mentioned
all the wrong predictions ?
In fact, every prediction of doom,
from an environmental issue,
from acid rain to the hole
in the ozone layer,
has been wrong.
100% wrong predictions of doom !
Let’s go back to Roger Revelle
in the late 1950’s, who seemed to
start the predictions of a coming
CO2-caused global warming catastrophe?
That means climate scaremongering
started over 60 years ago !
How many decades of “crying wolf”
about a coming climate change crisis
are required before we stop believing
the weekly articles predicting
a coming climate change
catastrophe ?
My climate science blog:
http://www.elOnionBloggle.Blogspot.com
Clearly it has been a problem because USA has not given all it’s money to the poor of the world and surrendered to the UN for past CO2 crimes. Until that happens climate change will always be a problem to the left.
It’s a problem because Capitalism still exists.
Well, people on the Left could get rid of Capitalism and the (nonexistent) problem would be solved. However, the solution would result in a completed depopulated planet.
The alt-Left “solution” would turn Earth into another Mars.
Russia was not capitalist from 1917 on and some say it still is not. During their socialist era, the country became the most disastrous environmental mess on the planet. So which economic system do you propose?
Their goal is less complicated and more serious than you imply. And they are a lot closer to accomplishing their goal than you think. The bureaucracies goal is to bamboozle a voting majority or if you would like, a voting “consensus” one of their favorite terms.
With a voting “Borg” majority, They intend to take control over our lives. They will keep telling us throughout the process that they are saving us from ourselves and that one day we will thank them. These saving government actions will manifest themselves as: restrictions on individual liberties, massive increase to cost of living, severe decrease in quality of life.
By the time it has all kicked in it will be too late, short of revolution, to restore individual freedom to this once great experiment in liberty.
Yes, Lomborg and the lukewarmers continue to feed the industry. The alarmist industry revolves around talking about getting carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. These people neither know nor care about what the Keeling curve looks like. They are so useless at anything practical that they have to keep their BS-ing industry alive in order to collect their $$ and phony-virtue rewards. If they actually had to reduce levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere they wouldn’t know where to start. If atmospheric carbon dioxide levels really were a problem, it wouldn’t be idiots like them solving the problem. So keeping the phony industry alive is what it’s all about.
Now they’re reduced to mentally abusing children, we may be seeing the beginning of the end.
The lukewarmers (John Christy, Roy Spencer, Judith Curry, Richard Lindzen, Pat Michaels, etc.) are more likely correct than any other group.
Add Will Happer to the lukewarmer list…
https://store.cato.org/book/lukewarming
I’ve had conversations with Paul Knappenburger here on WUWT.
Like all the climate modelers I’ve encountered (more than 2 dozen), Paul knows nothing of physical error analysis.
Both he and Pat Michaels give the models far too much credit.
Strange that you would appeal to authority and use “more likely” language.
I haven’t read the paper in detail, but my understanding from reading detailed comments here is that empirically, Lewis and Curry have ECS at 1.7C per doubling. So from 280ppm to 560ppm (the latter which we will probably arrive at) will give 1.7C of warming, which is .2C above the hysterical’s catastrophe point.
So yeah, go ahead, feed the bedwetting, phony catastrophist child abusers, by all means, but then stop complaining about them.
Lomborg is not as concerned with the science as with economic costs based on statistical probabilities of the warmists’ claims. That’s not a bad thing. Good debaters use data provided not just by neutral sources, but by their adversaries in order to create the most cogent counter-arguments. It’s good rhetorical strategy to make a small concession to your opponent before you pick apart the conclusions that follow from that argument. Then you build a far stronger case.
Don’t confuse Lomborg’s civility with weakness. I’ve seen him in several interviews teamed with a variety of different sceptics in open debates. He wins, time and again, in the process swaying many alarmist listeners. Alarmists are animated by fears instilled by fuzzy language and little-understood “authority”. It appears that Lomborg knows how to soothe these emotionally-fraught arguments, modeling some of the most important qualities lacking in the heated arguments of the catastrophists: articulateness, optimism and coolness under fire.
Consider any adversary against whom he might debate, from the 16-year old autistic girl who we’ve seen twisting and frowning before the adoring Ted audiences… to the best-prepared functionary of government… to the rabid mouthpieces of the science (say Ben Santer). Lomborg wins.
His “bottom line” is the dollar value of damage which actuaries come up with and he typically does his cost/benefit analyses based on this. Like others, I’m put off by Lomborg’s concessions – chief among them stating unequivocally that “global warming” is real and a problem – but he inevitably proves that the “damage” or destruction of a warming planet are offset many times over by positive investments in technology and smart growth, which help all of mankind. My take-away: dollars spent to counter carbon are far more productively spent on other things.
I disagree with one of his assessments: he says health care and education top the list of needs of people in the developing world. Many people here would say that cheap energy tops those needs and I agree.
To Bill Parsons: +100
I disagree with his curious statement:
“The world must invest more in green-energy research and development eventually to bring the prices of renewables below those of fossil fuels, so that everyone will switch.
I don’t want the planet littered with green energy boondoggles and concomitant pollution, all with no redeeming social value.
It’s a mealy-mouthed statement coming sandwiched in between litany of anti-alarmist arguments. Lomborg has always called for balanced research, but using moderate language – i.e. over time, and as the technologies make cheaper solar feasible. He’s not calling for a global shift to renewables; he’s merely articulating how absurdly far “the world” would have to go to swap renewables for fossil fuels. He follows with the statement that this is the least of the world’s worries; we need to stop trying to frighten people. I wholeheartedly agree.
I have to agree with Greene. Lomborg’s lukewarmism is maddening and scientifically irresponsible. However, I assume that he is trying to save his career and his voice in this sea of madness.
Dr Ron Havelock, a firm believer in the scientific method.
Believing in the scientific method is easy. Actually using it might be what you meant.
TL;DR. Strangely formatted.
Bjorn Lomborg…….I’m a big fan and have been ever since The Skeptical Environmentalist back in the early 2000s. However, I see and hear you recently making statements that essentially say “global warming is a problem that we need to solve”. Can you point to any solid scientific evidence that supports that position? There are many indications, historical and current, that a little warming of the planet is good for the human race and most of the lifeforms that currently inhabit our changeable world.
Phil Rae
You have common sense.
You’ll have even more if you
stop listening to “lukewarmers”
like Bjorn Lomborg !
The lukewarmers steer the debate
to how much global warming CO2
will cause, and how much damage
to the environment CO2 will cause,
deflecting attention from the
junk science that supports the
Climate Change ( is dangerous) Hoax
The Green New Deal (Green Bad Dream)
also deflects attention from the
underlying junk science,
to steer the debate to how fast
should the world act to reduce
CO2 emissions.
The Skeptical Environmentalist should be required reading for everyone. Lomborg’s views on climate change aren’t terribly different than John Christy’s…
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/16/us/skeptic-of-climate-change-john-christy-finds-himself-a-target-of-suspicion.html
Between the realms of climate science and politics, stands a field of study known as “decision-making under uncertainty. In any model, the do-nothing scenario is your first baseline, yet Alarmists never even seem to acknowledge its existence except as an unstudied horror story used to scare the children.
You can take the wildest claims of the Alarmists as true, and you STILL won’t justify the actions being proposed. The expected benefits of any plan of action must outweigh the expected costs, and they don’t.
Yep… Plus, if we took the actions being proposed, we would deprive ourselves of the resources necessary to adapt to whatever the weather does in the future. The Precautionary Principle is the only thing in this world wronger than Malthusian predictions.
This is what makes me the most angry. The tax they take from the community and spend on wind and solar is the very money that should be hardening the infrastructure against wind, water and drought.
Lomborg has always agreed that warming is occurring – it is, obviously, since we are in an interglacial period where it always, over the long term (thousands of years) is warming rather than cooling. He has always concurred that there are naturally at least some negative impacts to at least some persons or parts of the world’s multitude of ecosystems, which also is true. All climate changes result in winners and losers, individually. Lomborg also agrees that rising CO2 concentrations is a contributor to global warming, which is pretty much undeniable. As to its relative contribution, as compared to other natural climate cycles, Lomborg does not think it is worthwhile arguing over, since the net result is simply not a catastrophic problem that we have to solve today.
What Lomborg denies is that this situation of gradual warming is a crisis requiring drastic actions to attempt to reverse our natural warming, he does not deny that warming is a fact, over the long term.
I see nothing in his positions that is deserving of the vicious attacks that some in this thread are launching at him, because he dares not subscribe to their religious adherence to global-not-warming, which is just as silly and stupid as the religiosity of the climate alarmists.
As Ronald Reagan was famous for saying:
“Anyone who agrees and allies with us 80% of the time is not our 20% enemy”.
Treating Lomborg as an enemy is like eating your own young.
+42 x 1042
“Treating Lomborg as an enemy is like eating your own young.”
Not really. Lomborg does pay far too much lip service to the AGW pseudo-science.
However, I don’t see him as an “enemy,” but rather as someone who contributes something eminently useful to the discussion – the supposed “solutions” (e.g., “Kyoto,” “Paris”) to the “climate crisis” wouldn’t do a damn thing about it, even if you DO accept the pseudo-science as being factual. And THAT bears repeating a thousand times over.
Duane – March 19, 2019 at 9:14 am
“YUP”, Lomborg is right as rain, ….. just like the multiple outbursts of flatulence that occurs after I have eaten my lettuce salads and big helping of Pinto beans are also a contributor to global warming, …… which is fer shur undeniable by most everyone in close proximately to me during said flatulence time.
Duanem “ Lomborg also agrees that rising CO2 concentrations is a contributor to global warming, which is pretty much undeniable.”
Radiation physics is not a theory of climate.
The only scientifically valid position on the current CO2-AGW hysteria is that no one knows what they’re talking about.
That doesn’t stop the yodeling, though.
Pat Frank – March 19, 2019 at 1:50 pm
Pat, since you put it that way, I hafta agree with you, because, to wit:
hysteria – exaggerated or uncontrollable emotion or excitement, especially among a group of people.
Numerous “Cotton Mathers” abound regarding AC3 (Anthropogenic Caused Climate Change).
http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/people/c_mather.html
A ‘learned man’ for his day, yet still indoctrinated by irrational religious thinking. Interestingly he was a strong advocate of indoctrinating youth as well.
Unfortunately as with all religions they invariably misdiagnose the condition and then apply the exact wrong remedy.
It didn’t turn out so well for the poor women who disagreed with his with his diagnoses.
How many cycles of witch burnings must we endure before we can spot this pernicious threat and stop it in its germination?
Since the real world isn’t providing the panic needed, the only thing left is extreme language (propaganda).
The reasoning is obvious. As more and more CO2 is added the extra warming from each extra molecule decreases exponentially. That’s basic science; Beer-Lambert’s law.
But, as the extra warming gets smaller and smaller its impact increases. That’s basic homeopathy.
Of course, some of us sceptics might doubt that homeopathy works.
But not these school children taught by these school teachers. Or the United Nations Secretary-General
The warmer something gets, the more heat it takes to raise the temperature. That was high school physics in the ’70s. Now they muddy it with ‘feedbacks’.
Pop Piasa,
Not exactly. Temperature is linearly proportional to stored energy. i.e. 1 calorie (4.2 Joules) increases the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree C. However; the energy a body looses in Joules per second is proportional to T^4. For some reason, consensus science tends to ignore this inconvenient fact. It’s almost like they consider the atmosphere a diode that only lets energy pass in one direction, rather than as a semi-transparent body that allows energy to pass in both directions.
The crucial fact is that it takes more work (Joules) to sustain higher temperatures, but not necessarily to achieve them. You are correct that feedback is a red herring which was initially introduced by Hansen (who else) and serves only to obfuscate reality, since reality doesn’t serve the agenda.
M Courtney – March 19, 2019 at 6:35 am
Does that basic science FACT also apply to atmospheric H20 vapor?
And given the following fact, to wit:
“The ground heats up and re-emits energy as longwave radiation in the form of infrared (IR) rays. ” https://climate.ncsu.edu/edu/RadiationTypes
If the heated surface is constantly emitting rays after rays after rays …… or waves after waves after waves …… or photons after photons after photons …….. of longwave (IR) radiation, ….. how does and/or why does the number (quantity) of CO2 molecules in the air determine “how much” IR energy each CO2 molecule can absorb if one or more rays, waves or photons strike said molecule?
And ps, an added question. How do the IR sensors on the satellites detect the atmospheric CO2 molecules that are/were subject to the aforesaid exponential decrease in absorbed IR energy?
It’s weird that the part of my light-hearted post that you questioned was Beer-Lambert’s Law.
M Courtney – March 19, 2019 at 12:41 pm
“DUH”, is it not truly, truly WEIRD for you to be citing a Law of physics that specifically applies to the transmission of visible light through a non-opaque substance …… to explain the transmission of IR (heat energy) radiation/conduction between specifically denoted atmospheric gas molecules?
To wit:
My understanding of the above is that the Beer–Lambert law applies to the incoming solar irradiance, but not to the out-radiation or conduction of infrared radiation (IR).
Iffen I’m confused, …….. please explain.
Sam C
Sam,
You could read this or more easily ask yourself, if the Beer-Lambert Law does not apply to IR, why is the unit of climate sensitivity referred to as that caused by a doubling of CO2?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/beer-lambert-law
philincalifornia, ….. why didn’t you just explain to me what your objection was with the contents of my above post?
\Or is your forte …… “Battling URLs”? (You know, just randomly post urls and they will think you know something about the subject.)
So, philincalifornia, …. why haven’t they employed the Beer-Lambert Law to CONVENIENTLY determine EXACTLY how much “warming” of the atmosphere that 400 ppm of CO2 is responsible for, …… HUH, HUH, HUH?
“How do the IR sensors on the satellites …”
The IR sensors on weather satellites are tuned to the transparent regions of the atmosphere on either side of the10u ozone line, thus are unaffected by GHG absorption. The exception is the water vapor channel which is tuned to a specific H2O absorption line that’s weak enough to vary as water vapor concentrations vary.
Note that in the absense of clouds, nearly half of the LWIR energy emitted by the surface passes right through the LWIR transparent regions of the atmosphere. This inconvenient fact is also frequently ignored. In effect, the GHG ‘blanket’ contains massive holes which precludes the ability to retain heat for any reasonable length of time. Think about how warm a blanket will keep you if has holes covering half its area.
Goading children into panicky reactions to climate change is abusive, the moral equivalent of tossing virgins onto bonfires to appease angry gods. Student strikes to goad policy is the moral equivalent of toddlers holding their breath until they turn blue to make Mommy cave into some fierce, but usually trivial demand. Children aren’t too far removed from a blue-breath strategy. They need encouragement to mature AWAY from that, not to revert to it. We don’t need aging Pied Pipers like Al Gore and Naomi Klein leading children into oblivion.
It isn’t known how crucial carbon dioxide is to climate, or whether more CO2 is bad. It’s a necessary nutrient for photosynthesis, for instance, the basis of all life on earth. For all we know so far, more CO2 is a net benefit.
Moreover, what are the striking children trying to achieve? A world where housing, transportation, food, metal, and thousands of manufactured products are less available? Is that the future they want?
Key too, is that the entire continent of Asia with 2/3rds of the world’s population, is exempt from all carbon controls. Blinkered societies may endorse self-destructive policies, but there’s nothing the non-Asian world can do that will even show up on a pie chart. Only a damn fool or a child abuser is going to panic over futile gestures.
Tom G. wrote:
“Key too, is that the entire continent of Asia with 2/3rds of the world’s population, is exempt from all carbon controls.”
Carbon controls are not needed.
CO2 is not pollution.
Adding CO2 to the atmosphere
benefits our planet.
However, there’s lots of air, water and land
pollution in China, and India.
That’s real pollution, but western
environmentalists ignore it,
because they don’t care about the
environment — they just want to scare
people about harmless CO2,
and then tell them how to live
“It isn’t known how crucial carbon dioxide is to climate, or whether more CO2 is bad”
Each W/m^2 of solar forcing results in 1.62 W/m^2 of NET surface emissions. Since the planet can’t tell one Joule of forcing from any other, the next W/m^2 of forcing can only contribute 1.62 W/m^2 to the surface emissions and not the 4.4 W/m^2 claimed by the IPCC in support of the presumed ECS of 0.8C per W/m^2 of solar forcing.
Understanding that 4.4 is much larger than 1.62 tells us with absolute certainty that CO2 is no where near as powerful at warming the surface as the IPCC requires in order to satisfy their charter of identifying science to support the repressive agenda of the UNFCCC. Instead, they fabricate plausible sounding, yet absolutely fake, science.
tossing virgins onto bonfires to appease angry gods.
=========
Virgins are tossed onto the fire to convince all other virgins that they better start sleeping with the priests or they will be next.
Fire; quicker than liquor.
Except governments are tossing a trillion or two of taxpayers dollars into the fire every year…to stop climate change…doh!
nuclear war was going tho end the world back in the 1960s and kids went on CND marches.
It didn’t but those kids are now climate change activists…they got addicted to doom laden protest..
I saw a video clip last night on Fox showing Al Gore on CNN claiming that 99 percent of scientists support CAGW. That’s right, Al has raised the percentage from 97 to 99 now.
He also said extreme weather was three times as bad now as in the past.
The CNN host did not question Al’s claims.
Al just gets up there and lies his butt off and gets away with it.
Had Al looked at the actual statistics about extreme weather he would have seen that all categories are either down or have no change. But if Al used the facts then he couldn’t lie about CAGW being a threat or even possible. So Al lies.
You can’t let facts get in the way of global wealth redistribution.
Redistribution map.
People—>Al
Fretslider,
In Al’s case, it’s called personal global wealth accumulation.
That’s pretty much the case for all of consensus climate AGW-ism, Tom.
If the denizens paid attention to the gritty factual details of actual science, they’d have nothing to talk about.
The entire field runs on false precision.
Those folks don’t even rise to the level of methodological hack.
We must listen to the children, they know when it comes to the complexities of Earth’s climate.
If they run off to join IS they didn’t realise what they were doing, too young, you see, to know any better.
We must give 16 year olds the vote…. (assuming they’ll vote as per indoctrination in the social engineering factories – aka schools)
Kid are tools, wait till they find out.
“nuclear war was going tho end the world back in the 1960s”
Children are easy to scare. During the Cuban Missile Crisis there were scenarios of nuclear Armageddon played over and over again on the news. For years starting at age 8 and well into my teen years I had recurring nightmares or probably more accurately described as a night terror where I would see myself looking out the window at the glowing red beginning of the end of the world.
No wonder many parents won’t allow their children anywhere near the ‘news’.
I have to admit, it happened to me as well, in the ’80s.
Then one day a earthquake struck (no damage) and when I realized it was no nuclear war I got cured of my terror.
There are some grown ups in this area.
Deniers are they called.
I would like anyone to explain why solar brightening is not every body’s concern.
If we take SO2 out of the atmosphere the same thing will happen as when Pinatubo exploded.
But with different sign!
Heating due to less clouds.
That is brightening .
I think you will find that if there is any ‘heating’ the hydrologic cycle will work as advertised and accelerate to maintain homeostasis, both through evaporative heat loss and by increasing albedo (the Iris hypothesis). The hydrologic cycle operates powerfully in the tropics and subtropics – all the time. Increasing temperatures (if they happen) will widen the zone in which hydrologic convective cooling is common and the hydrologic cycle will still keep the Earth around the same max temperatures.
It must be noted that the Earth is in an interglacial in an ice age at the moment.
Ian W – March 19, 2019 at 8:46 am
In reference to the above “surface heating” and the hydrologic cycle maintaining homeostasis, it reminded me that it was yesterday afternoon when I had one of those “EUREKA” moments and asked myself, ……
“Why has no one ever talked about or discussed what I will call the Wind Chill Factor as being the most important homeostasis process for conductively ridding the earth’s surface of its absorbed IR (heat) energy?”
No one that I’m aware of except Willis E with his Emergent Phenomena.
And ps, I chose the name Wind Chill Factor ….. because everyone knows exactly what it means.
Next in the queue are nursing home residents paid to protest. The Climate Crusades agenda requires a steady flow of misguided or paid advocates to fill the wide messaging pipe.
… then substance abusers, whose chant will be, “Why should I get clean, when the world is doomed by climate change?”
Anyone old enough to be in a nursing home is old enough to have been educated with old fashioned facts instead of modern fairytales, so I doubt that they will join the Climate Crusade.
Straight out of “Lord of the Flies”
Lomborg writes:
Yes, global warming is a problem ….
No it is not!
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
Indeed, Steve. However global warming is a problem, or more precisely the misguided political policies being foisted upon the public to “solve” the non-existent problem of global warming is the problem.
I would hope that Lomborg means that global warming is a problem, in the sense that it is NOT a problem people absurdly insist that it is, but I’m hoping for too much, I guess.
It’s a shame he cannot take his skepticism quite far enough.
Exactly how is a couple degrees spread out over the whole globe a problem?
Exactly how is a couple degrees assessed by allowing regions with warmer trends to dictate over regions of cooler trends … a problem? ANSWER: That IS the problem — global warming at a distance.
This is the problem:
We are setting out to intentionally change the economic model that has been reigning since the Industrial
Revolution. – – – – Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary – UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
He is I understand an economist, so he wisely stays away from criticising the science and concentrates on the economics. A sensible person, wouldn’t you say?
Boy T,
Yes, that would be a very practical method of keeping some of the alarmist hit men off him.
Hopefully, this is his strategy. Thanks for pointing out this possibility.
We have the solution to global warming. Turn off the hype. Everything will be fine.
troe
You summed up the only logical response
to global warming in 15 words.
Brilliant !
Thanks. Locally I’m known as the village idiot 🙂 Took over from my father who’s father was the town drunk. Basically we’ve been in public service for generations.
Wow your father was the town drunk, my town is so small we all have to take turns!
No matter how you slice it, the politicians who promote the climate scam demonstrate both in their failed character ethic and in intelligence they are unfit to lead.
That goes for both Dems and Republicans who say Climate Change is a problem we have to solve. That simply makes them hucksters and snake oil sellers.
I wouldn’t trust an otherwise seemingly intelligent person who peddles climate change with my lunch money, much less my tax money.
And the pseudo science climate scientists, there’s a world for them, charlatans.
There is a quotation that I more or less remember – but I cannot find the author. It goes something like:
“It ain’t not knowing things that makes a man ignorant. It is knowing things that ain’t so.”
The nearest I can get is “Abe Martin’s definition of ignorance was “not so much what a person don’t know, as what he knows that ain’t so.” And he is certainly correct.”. (quoteinvestigator.com/2018/11/18/know-trouble/)
And I could not help thinking, seeing the ‘climate change’ protesters on the TV and a couple of the young (teenagers) on the Andrew Bolt show, who had got off the whole patter lock stock and barrel, that the protests were a beautiful demonstration of the definition of Ignorance.
Most attribute that to Mark Twain.
But it may simply itself be another case of “what you think you know that ain’t so.”
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/11/18/know-trouble/
Ronald Reagan was more explicit: “It’s not that our liberal friends are ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”
Wow your father was the town drunk, my town is so small we all have to take turns!
I like this, I do. However, there seems to be an abundant supply of “Village Idiots”.
Humbly resubmitting this:
Coming Out On Climate
Authority figures, foretelling
Hot doom (and our “myths” dispelling),
Cast foul aspersion
On skeptical version
(Which keeps carbon credits from selling)!
Now, shriller and louder they’re yelling,
To drown out the doubters’ rebelling!
New taxes are “just”
When you’ve gained public trust,
So “the questioners” (quickly) they’re quelling.
I’ve arrived at this realization;
Our industrial civilization
Can only be sin
If the ‘green’ Marxists win-
On their platform of demonization!
So a simple question to ask these children might be:
If you took 100 aspirin all at once you might die, so does that mean there is no dose of aspirin that is safe?
Back in 2007, James Hansen said the following: “If we cannot stop the building of more coal-fired power plants, those coal trains will be death trains – no less gruesome than if they were boxcars headed to crematoria, loaded with uncountable irreplaceable species.” Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth had come out the previous year, and Alarmism was in full-throated spittle-flecked hysteria mode. Suggestions for a “Climate Nuremberg” for Skeptics were made, and much, much more. But a strange thing happened on the goose-stepping march to a world-wide government taking control of energy systems, destroying economies, and destroying democracy itself; people began to notice that something was off about not only the claims, but the way they were being made, brooking no criticism, and indeed the threat of losing one’s job and ability to support oneself, just for starters. The Skeptic movement, if it can be called such, was an organic, grassroots, and almost entirely voluntary one, growing out of the extremely overheated, and dangerous rhetoric of the Climatists. Of course, it didn’t help that none of the wild claims they made of things that “would happen” in 5 or ten years, never did. So, they had to tone it down, at least somewhat. But now, the Alarmists are in crisis mode. They are losing the battle, and they know it. So, they have upped the ante again, but now, they have the wild card of “extreme weather”, which they play at every opportunity.
s/b “none of the wild claims they made of things that “would happen” in 5 or ten years, EVER did.”
I predict that Arctic Sea ice extent will increase during this current solar minimum and if it does then it will be difficult to say that the Sun has no effect on Earths climate because it increased during the last solar minimum.
Don’t forget the AMO. It’s never simple – except in climate-simpleton land
The Washington Post reported that “for many children and young adults, global warming is the atomic bomb of today.”
Instead of “duck and cover” kids can be taught to quickly jump on top of their desks to escape the rising ocean.
“Jump and Balance” as the new “Duck and Cover”:
Ok kids, in todays class we will rehearse “Jump and balance” for when the rising oceans flood our cities. Now everyone, jump up on your desks and balance yourselves so you don’t fall into the rising waters.
Actually they can just be issued instructions on HOW to “sit” on their desks when they’re about 100 years old. And even then only IF necessary (probably not).
“global warming is the atomic bomb of today” — How true!
It’s odd, we don’t fear nuclear war anymore, just nuclear power.
Before that, we feared communism, now we can’t wait for it.
Maybe some day in the future, we won’t fear global warming either.
I’m afraid to ask what fear comes next.
Fear no more, it’s already here. PLASTIC
Bjorn is shallow and pathetic. He claims to understand and quantify the economic implications of climate change policies but he is too stupid to comprehend basic physics and maths of the science itself. So intellectually lazy he takes IPCC nonsense at face value!
Twelve years to apocalypse is preposterous. The most dramatic global temperature change trend ever measured is like 0.2 K per DECADE. The huge effective thermal capacitance of the oceans prevents global temperature from changing faster. Scarring (scaring?) children with preposterous stories is child abuse.
Using children as pawns to further AGW propaganda is an indication of how desperate they’ve become and the depths to which they will sink. As noted, these are children from prosperous Western countries that have the most to lose and translated that means the most to give to the “cause”. The boldness of the CC scam should be a wake up call to all people that nothing can/will get in the way of people/organizations bent on securing global power. Remember, Global Warming is a UN initiative.
When I was in elementary school in the early 80s the alarmists of that time were preaching peak oil. I remember very well an assembly where they showed the whole school a movie foretelling of the coming energy crisis because pur parents were using up all the world’s oil. There would be wars, famines and plagues if we didn’t go home and tell our parents to conserve energy. The images of our future were horrifying. So I did. My father worked as an executive in a company that provided tungsten carbide inserts to the oil rigs. He laughed amd showed me an article in an oil industry journal about a study where scientists drilled for oil in some of the places least likely to have oil and even there they found if you drilled deep enough you would find it. Then he said “we’re never running out. Don’t believe everything your teachers tell you.” Many of my classmates were not lucky enough to have parents that taught some skepticism. So they bought it. My own kids today are assailed by the same lies. They are also being taught to be skeptics be me (and their grandpa remembers that story…unfortunately he doesn’t have the industry journal any more).
The reality is that there has not been any serious work done to quantify natural climate change.
Thus we get never ending arguments over who’s guess might be correct.
What would the increase in global temperature have been when we came out of the Little Ice Age if CO2 levels had remained at 280ppm?
Apparently we have had 2 degrees C of warming since 1850 to the present day, much of which happened by the early 1900s, so would the increase have continued or stopped at the 1910 temperature?
I’d love to see professionally done polls of scientists, statisticians in the field, and engineers (including crony scientists…i.e. those on the AWG dole) showing how many would subscribe to:
1.) Runaway warming being certain before 2050.
2.) …before 2100
3.) …Ever
Where are actual questionnaires of climate scientists? Questionnaires sent to ALL scientists and Engineers?
I’d like to see the statistical reports broken down by Sources of funding. Listings if Publication contributions (authored, reviewed, cited) would also be informative.
Is that crap study by the cartoonist Cook all we have?
Where’s Gallop, Zogby, Reuters, BBC (cringe), Harris, Rasmussen and the rest?
Did I miss them? I’ve searched for hours and all I get is poorly executed polls with poorly written conclusions all saying “95-or more percent agree the Climate has been warming”. That number should be 99 +/- 1%.
I know there is no 97% consensus in Catastrophic Climate Change…but I don’t know what the truth is.
WUWT?
97% refers to 75 carefully selected “scientists” worldwide, see Gabro’s comment
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/11/10/freeman-dyson-on-heretical-thoughts-about-global-warmimg/#comment-2205470
Lomborg is correct “Paris will – in the best case – fix just 1% of the climate problem [sic]” and that Nature found “no major advanced industrialized country is on track to meet its pledges”.
The whole debate has descended into a ‘tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’.
And just think of the extreme language they use on any other issue.
They didn’t throw the Jews in the camps on the first day – they spent about ten years justifying it first.
The left’s preferred tactic to get a population of sheeple is encourage hostility been the generations, so that when the oldies have gone (by whatever means that takes) the new generation of the indoctrinated can be better used.
Does anyone else think it ironic that the child protesters in the video are well wrapped to fight the cold weather using fossil fuel-based clothing?
How many of their parents allow these fossil fools to make all other decisions in their households?
Will they listen to and heed the future demands of their own children should they deign to have them?
Well fed (They don’t even have to cook, just dial up on their smart phone app for home delivery), healthy, fit(-ish), ample tech, ample free time to learn rather than work in fields usually ending in agonising death, fossil fuelled transport, power, well clothed…
Yeah ironic!
The Economist recently published a world-wide poll that was privately commissioned by Nitto Denko Corporation:
https://www.nitto.com/eu/en/about_us/gallery/prioritiesofprogress/whitepaper.html
Although it seems they didn’t specifically ask about climate or global warming, once again the world’s people consistently ranked the environment last, or second-last to R&D, when asked to prioritize. And once again, it is clear the elites with their snouts in the bureaucrats’ trough are still completely out of touch with the citizens of the world. (I assume they surveyed adults and not a bunch of D-grade school kids bunking off school with some teachers who didn’t fancy trying to educate the kids that day or any other day.)
Thanks for all the great comments. It helps me in better understanding the highly complex issues and how others think about them. If it weren’t for you all, I might be buying into the propaganda.
One of the things I have learned over the many years is that you really shouldn’t trust those in politically derived positions or the corporate media who seem to be their voices.
A great book is Lincoln Unmasked by Thomas Di Lorenzo. He dedicates a chapter or two to what he calls the gatekeepers, those who try to cover up and continue to cover up facts and events. As people are able to research and communicate better and cheaper, it’s just easier to get and share information. Thinking that we will not learn things hidden by those in political and economic power is really naive.
As an example, a woman writing on the history of railroads found receipts and deeds with Abe Lincoln signatures on them at strategic sites such as turnarounds and stations along the railroad lines the Republicans in Congress were subsidizing. It is common knowledge Lincoln worked as an Attorney for the railroads even having his own railcar before being elected President and dabbled as a land speculator.
No conflict of interest in his actions, right? You don’t really think he was elected President because he was so honest, do you? Read the book you’ll learn a lot more about “honest” Abe.
I think that these students should shift the focus of their environmental beliefs/activism from “climate change” – which is only somewhat caused by mankind with its greenhouse gas emissions anyway – to genuine environmental issues like biodiversity decline (including the poaching crisis), the global plastics/garbage problem, and noxious air/water pollution, as well as potential asteroid strikes, the anti-vaccination movement and the associated measles comeback, and the antibiotics crisis.