Guest opinion By Chris Martz [featured image: Eric Holthaus]
For years now, [man-made] climate change skeptics, like myself have dealt with bullying from people on the AGW side of the argument.
There has been constant bickering back and forth between the two sides, and with the current political madhouse, it hasn’t gotten any better. In fact, it seems to be getting worse and worse as time wears on.
I rarely see skeptics bully those on the AGW side – yeah they like to pick on Al Gore – however, I see a lot more bullying and harassment from those on the AGW side.
One example is very recent. On March 28, meteorologist Eric Holthaus went to the extremes stating that we are headed for “an unlivable world within our lifetimes.”
In response, Michael Palmer, a meteorologist at The Weather Company, stated that he, like me, finds it hard to believe that a trace gas in our atmosphere is going to cause an “unlivable world.”
Instead of having a kind, scientific discussion on this, Holthaus decided to act like a bully and say… yeah, you can read it below.
Holthaus wasn’t the only keyboard cowboy to chime in on this. Numerous others who are using Twitter without their real name also stated that Michael Palmer is just a “denier,” among other things.
My biggest pet peeve is probably the word “denier.” I loathe the word “denier” when it is used in the climate change context. There is nobody on Earth who I have met or chatted with that “denies” that climate change exists.
Climate change, by technical definition, means a change in the climate for any number of reasons. Those changes do not have to be man-made. However, the term “climate change” has morphed into a monster. When it is used nowadays, it simply assumes that the climate change was man-made, when in reality, that may not be the case.
Earth has been through ice ages, glacial periods, interlglacial periods, mini ice ages, and times that have been both much colder and much warmer than the present, and all of that seems to get lost in the sauce.
Now, I don’t have an issue with the man-made climate change theory itself. I really don’t. I get the argument, but you have to understand that observations are failing to match what climate models and scientists have predicted.
Scientists were expecting that we would see an increase in severe weather events, such as tornadoes, hurricanes, heat waves, and drought, yet actual observations show that severe weather is becoming less common and less extreme.
According to a USA Today article (using NOAA‘s data) from December 28, 2018, last year was the first year on record in the United States where there were zero violent tornadoes (EF4 or EF5) (Figure 1). The overall trend of violent tornadoes is significantly downward over the past 69 years.¹
Both hurricane and tropical cyclone frequency globally (Figure 2) have also seen a downward trend over the past 49 years.² In fact, between the 2005 and 2017 hurricane season, there were no major hurricane landfalls in the United States. None.
Last summer, meteorologist Dr. Roy Spencer uploaded the graph below (Figure 3) to his blog, which is a plot of the average number of 100 and 105 degree days at 1,114 USHCN stations between 1895 and 2017.³ Notice the downward trend? Yep.
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“My biggest pet peeve is probably the word “denier.” I loathe the word “denier””
https://twitter.com/Thongch34759935/status/1108680158146260993
Once you become convinced that the other side is going to cause “an unlivable world in our lifetime”, it’s a pretty short step to killing those who disagree with you.
Yeah, it’s dangerous for Alarmists to lie to people.
There are estimates that about 10 percent of the population are psychopaths of one degree or another. Alarmist scare tactics get these kinds of people very agitated.
And then we have a large percentage of the population that are not crazy, they are just credulous, but they can get crazy if they think their lives are in danger.
So the potential for violence is out there.
Fortunately, the weather isn’t cooperating with the CAGW disaster predictions, so although the psychopaths may go overboard, the credulous will probably wait until they actually see some evidence of unusual weather damage and since there is a very good chance they will never see unusual, catastrophic weather, they probably won’t feel the need to take action, other than complaining.
It’s not good to agitate psychopaths, for any reason. Yet the Democrats do this constantly on a variety of subjects. On purpose. They want to get people upset. I won’t say they are looking to get people killed, but what do you think happens when you agitate a psyho to the breaking point.
The Democrats and their rhetoric are a poison to human society. The good news is, they look like they are starting to self-destruct, and Trump is as pure as the driven snow.
Robert Jay Lifton
SACRED SCIENCE (demands conformity to Dogma)
Sacred Science
The totalist milieu maintains an aura of sacredness around its basic doctrine or ideology, holding it as an ultimate moral vision for the ordering of human existence
Questioning or criticizing those basic assumptions is prohibited
A reverence is demanded for the ideology/doctrine, the originators of the ideology/doctrine, the present bearers of the ideology/doctrine
Offers considerable security to young people because it greatly simplifies the world and answers a contemporary need to combine a sacred set of dogmatic principles with a claim to a science embodying the truth about human behavior and human psychology
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/03/27/why-i-dont-believe-in-science/#comment-2666384
Don’t know about the rest of you, but I go right at the warmers. Without fail I run out of platform, before I run out of argument.
None of them ever win. The sea level rise people. The ocean acid people. The average temperature people. The endangered species people.
Knock them over like ten pins. Because they’re wrong. You can take that to the bank.
Don’t even have to look up science papers. I use the ones they post. You go back to the original sources, and they either don’t support what the warmers claim, or they’re shady, based on half baked computer output.
I think we should, when we argue, cite debunked polar bear alarmism as a microcosm of yet-to-be-debunked climate change alarmism.
“here is nobody on Earth who I have met or chatted with that “denies” that climate change exists”
A couple of things. Climate change is merely short hand for anthropogenic climate change. It’s been that way from the start if the IPCC. We didn’t call it the IPACC.
Clue bird time. When someone calls yo the D word, the mean…. you deny ACC or AGW.
Pretending that they mean any old climate change is a brain dead 5th grade tactic.
They mean anthropogenic climate change, you know that’s what they mean, so pretending to misunderstand what they mean by selectively engaging your inner sperg is just dumb.
Finally, you will meet plenty of skeptics who deny the existence of global temperatures. Last I looked you cant claim to believe that the climate changes and simultaneously deny that the key metric of change is meaningless.
Steven, your comment: “Clue bird time. When someone calls yo the D word, the mean…. you deny ACC or AGW.” confirms the “lazy” and “imprecise language” descriptions. If you think that climate change means either ACC or AGW you have fallen into each misuse.
You other failed attempt at explanation is: “Finally, you will meet plenty of skeptics who deny the existence of global temperatures. ” Nearly every time I see this denial it is talking about the average of global temperatures. Surely you understand it is a mathematical construct using horrible data to construct it.
Why are you condoning these misuses? Please use standard terms and their definitions or define your unique use. In science it should be an imperative!
“Last I looked you cant claim to believe that the climate changes and simultaneously deny that the key metric of change is meaningless.”
What is the key metric of change? You are going to claim it is CO2, aren’t you? Where’s your evidence that CO2 is doing anything to the Earth’s atmosphere or climate?
Your “evidence” is the bogus Hockey Stick chart and the Greenhouse Gas Theory. Right? Got anything else besides that? How much does CO2 increase the warmth of the globe? You don’t know, do you. Yet you want us to believe that CO2 is a big factor, the key metric. Without any evidence whatsoever, just speculation, and fraudulent Hockey Stick charts.
As for skeptics ignoring that climate change actually means human-caused climate change, we don’t ignore the fact, we dispute that climate change means human-caused, because there are other causes to the climate changing and assuming it is all about CO2 is ignoring those factors. Skeptics are not enamored of the IPCC and their nomenclature.
I personally, usually try to have those using “climate change”, spell out exactly what they mean because there is more than one kind of climate change, there is the Mother Nature kind and there is the CO2 kind the Alarmists have dreamed up.
The Alarmists are the ones who conflate Mother Nature-caused climate change with human-caused climate change. They do it to confuse people. And it has worked pretty well, witness this argument.
No, Mr. Mosher. Serious people point out that the minor warming we have had, whether officially measured from the Little Ice age or only from 1950, has not caused a deterioration in any climate metric. No increases in the occurrence or severity of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, SLR, etc.
The political panic is generated by exaggerations of the outputs of unvalidated UN IPCC climate models. It is the politics of the Third World-dominated UN, Social Justice Warriors, Socialists, Globalists and similar control freaks that most worry me in the AWG debates.
The average of a collection of various monthly averages of various daily min/max temperatures from around the globe is worse than meaningless. It is superstitious nonsense.
Some folks call this sect of numerologists ‘climastrology’.
It has supernatural significance among those suffering from the pathology known as ‘magical thinking’, whose intellectual corruption by acceptance of Disney’s First Law, ‘wishing makes it so’ have been rendered insane.
This stupidity is a habit and habits are virtually impossible to break. Therefore it is, essentially, incurable.
You can never explain to a stupid person that he is stupid or how he is stupid because: check the definition of stupid.
“key metric” ??
Sounds like a thing, not just an abstraction.
Mr Mosher,
What then, is the optimum (absolute best for world as a whole) as a measure of climate???
What should this “key metric” be, so as to facilitate the best condition of earth?
Should it be what has historically & commonly been called the “optimum”? Or should it be a little colder?
Or is it that you do you not care about the “key measure”, you only care about quibbling about insignificant changes, and being rewarded for such?
(you don’t need to worry about answering all of the questions if you don’t have time … only the first one)
Paper Tiger, yes but just as fast as you do knock them down, up they pop again .
As previously mentioned its like the adverts on TV, its repeated again and again. I can only suggest that we use the same tactics, we must keep on telling the “Facts ” again and again .
MJE VK5ELL
“….. finds it hard to believe that a trace gas in our atmosphere is going to cause an “unlivable world.””
You are right to “believe” that.
As that is not what the consensus science as published by the IPCC in the ARs is saying.
It is saying that there are potential very serious consequences in certain parts of the world.
That will certainly cause social and economic disruption.
That is not a synonym for an “unlivable world”.
Yep get yer skis on-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/cold-weather-hits-many-parts-of-the-country-with-snow-falling-in-victoria/ar-BBVpeGk
Hit the Alps and get away from those inner city manic depressives and their potential serious consequences. Hanging out with sad sacks is catching and causes social and economic disruption.
“As that is not what the consensus science as published by the IPCC in the ARs is saying. It is saying that there are potential very serious consequences in certain parts of the world.”
Based on what? The IPCC can’t even tell us how much heat CO2 adds to the Earth’s atmosphere.
The IPCC can’t tell us about any feedbacks which might offset any heat CO2 added to the Earth’s atmosphere.
The IPCC is just guessing. The “consensus” is a guess. Real world experience disputes the dire predictions of the IPCC.
The IPCC is a business. They are selling Human-Caused Climate Change. Don’t put your faith in the word of someone who needs to sell you something.
Notice how the verbage has changed. Several years ago I was in a blog discussion and used the term “climate change” instead of “manmade climate change”. I was taken to the wood shed for my ignorance. This proved I knew nothing about the subjet. It was manmade climate change and anyone that did not use that term could not have an opinion on manmade climate change due to their ignorance.
Fast forward several years and no one is using manmade climate change, we are all ignorant deniers. Everyone is using climate change to mean manmade climate change as well as natural cllimate change.
“Everyone is using climate change to mean manmade climate change as well as natural cllimate change.”
That was the objective of the alarmists. They want everyone to assume that when they say climate change, they mean human-caused climate change. The alarmists don’t want to acknowledge that there might be something other than human-caused CO2, such as Mother Nature, that causes the climate to change.
The alarmists are trying to manipulate the language and the conversation with their confusion of Mother Nature-caused climate change with human-caused climate change. It’s what propagandists do.
We need to change this game. This is just name calling, with no solutions, nothing new.
Our paradigms are incorrect, at the conceptual level.
The ‘new’ nuclear is a civilization changing breakthrough which should be common ground for cult of CAGW followers and so called Skeptics. It is not new technology. It is old technology that was hidden and is still hidden.
In reply to:
Eric Holthaus
@EricHolthaus
“Nothing we have tried to do to it stop it is working”
William: It is not we, it is you guys. We did not push the green scams that do not work. The responsibility for the green scam pathetic mess, is on you guys.
There is a fission reactor design which was built and tested 50 years ago that is six times more efficient than fuel rod, water reactors, does not have catastrophic failure modes, 1/3 to 1/5 the cost, that is sealed, that operates at atmospheric pressure and that can be mass produced.
It is possible to significantly reduce human CO2 emissions through the use of the ‘new’ nuclear reactor.
“It’s not nihilism I feel — it’s the opposite. It’s an empathy overload.”
There are multiple independent observations/analysis results that unequivocally prove that humans are responsible for no more than 5% of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2.
There is no CAGW or AGW. We are fighting, destroying our economics, and installing green scams that do not work for no logic reason.
The opposition by the Greens to all things which produce energy minus CO2, other of course their favourites such as windmills and solar panels is a indication that their mission in life is to destroy the Western countries economies.
So what is wrong with say Hydro. Yes it usually means building a Dam. Not natural they say, but the formation of a lake is just natures way of containing a body of water, and that is “Natural”.
True as it filled some small creature may have been drowned, that’s again “Natural” But that is their argument against our building Dams. Hydro must be the best example of truly Green energy.
Then of course we have Nuclear, but wait, what about the Bomb. Well as I understand things a nuclear power station only needs about 12 % pure Uranium, whereas a Bomb needs 99 %.
Still that is close enough for the Greens warped thinking.
Its all just a big smokescreen, first destroy the economy of a country, then offer them a solution. True its called Communism and yes it did not work the first time around, but that was then. Today we have the perfect political solution to all of the problems of this Earth.
MJE VK5ELL
“Climate Change”, the current cop-out from “Global Warming”, is a moral panic.
People make money off this moral panic through the Socialist-State-Mandated redistribution of taxation into the hands of charlatans promising to fix everything. And since there was no threat, it works! . Big big money maker = AGW.
Oh, and they get totalitarian control over the citizens in the process of saving everyone which was the highest goal, right?
But here is the key tell that this is about money and social policy and nothing whatsoever to do with the underlying claim of a catastrophic climate event/runaway feed back loop:
These fanatics are programmed to NEVER discuss overpopulation and they are simultaneously taught to be in favour of open borders and mass migration even though that makes no sense from a carbon pollution stand point. And they want everyone to eat soy and not meat in order to feed the hungry world which also makes no sense in the long run. But more people = More Money. Did the light come on for you? This is a scam and it is about a global elite wanting society to grant them total control over your lives.
That is the bottom line. It is about power over other people.
I don’t loath the denier term. Think it makes their side look bad.