Larry Kummer, Editor Politics, Society & gender 14 April 2019
Summary: William Lind takes a sharp and accurate look at the politics of climate change. In modern America, always look beneath the glossy surface of narratives in the news.
Global Warming
By William S. Lind at Traditional Right, 10 April 2019.
Posted with his generous permission.
A March 15 article by Larry Kummer at the Fabius Maximus website discusses how global warming advocates have misused a worst-case scenario to generate panic. Titled āAbout the corruption of climate scienceā, Kummerās article details how politicians are misrepresenting climate projections, especially one called RCP 8.5. That their goal is to create fear should not surprise us: from the governmentās perspective, fear is a growth industry.
Russell Kirk called conservatism āPolitics Of Prudence
But the Left seeks far more. In fact, its goal is nothing less than total control of every aspect of human life, which we call ātotalitarianismā, justified by fear of climate change. Since everything a person does, including breathing, affects the climate, if climate change is a huge threat, someone needs to control everything. That āsomeoneā should obviously be whoever is most concerned about the climate, i.e., the extreme environmentalists and the larger coalition of which they are part, the culturally Marxist Left.
Every totalitarian ideology offers a one-factor explanation of why it deserves power over everyone and everything. For Marxism-Leninism, it was that the whole condition of man and society was determined by ownership of the means of production. The Communist Party, through the state, therefore had to control all producers and consumers, i.e., everyone. Todayās cultural Marxists argue that all of history is determined by which groups, defined by race and gender, have power over which other groups. Therefore, they, through the state, must have complete control over all such groups and everyone in them.
National Socialism justified its demand for total control by the need for racial purity, since race determined everything, and Fascismās power derived from its theory that everyone was defined by their corporate role in society. Mussolini said, āEverything for the state, nothing against the state, nothing outside the state.ā Italyās congenital inefficiency made sure that didnāt happen, but it is what all ideologies seekāincluding the ideology of environmentalism, for it is ideology, not science, that drives those sowing panic about global warming.
Theirs is an ideology of which we should warn even more strongly than other ideologies, because, again, everything we do affects the environment. This makes their demand for total control seem even more justifiable. Add in widespread public panic over increasingly volatile weather and you have an excellent basis on which everyone should surrender their freedom. Why, humanity itself stands on the brink of extinction. How can you justify your puny desires to do as you please?
We need a global warning against overstatements of global warming and its consequences. In fact, we have been for several centuries in a period of unusual climate stability. We cannot expect that to go on forever, because we know that in the past, the climate has changed and weather has become more volatile. Human ingenuity should prove adequate to deal with it, so long as we do not block that ingenuity through too much government intervention. Yes, overpopulated areas with dysfunctional states and cultures are likely to suffer, as they will under any scenario. The solution is not to let them come here, unless we want to become them.
Meanwhile, when we hear hysterical statements about global warming ending life as we know it in a few decades, we should remind ourselves that this is politics, not science. It is politics designed to panic us into surrendering our freedoms to a new, hideous totalitarian ideology. For those who want to see how such a totalitarianism might play out, read about Cascadia in Thomas Hobbesā {AKA WIlliam Lindās} recent novel, Victoria: A Novel of 4th Generation War
āāāāāāāāāāāāā
The Left looks at climate change and see an opportunity
Lind points to an obvious but too-seldom mentioned fact: to many on the Left, stoking fears of climate change are a means to gain power. They have been quite open about that. As Matthew C. Nisbet says in āSciences, Publics, Politics: The Green New Dilemmaā, from Issues in Science and Technology, Spring 2019.
āProgressives see climate change as not only a crisis but also an opportunity. As argued by Naomi Klein in her 2014 best-selling book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate
, a climate movement inspired by bold policy proposals such as the Green New Deal, and equal in intensity to political movements that battled slavery and colonialism, would allow an alliance of left-wing groups to achieve a diverse range of social justice goals. For progressives, climate change, she argued, is the best chance to right the āfestering wrongsā of colonialism and slavery, āthe unfinished business of liberation.āā
Proposals for a Green New Deal end the masquerade, proudly announcing that āfightingā climate change is a means to larger ends. See About the Green New Deal, dreams given form.
About the author
William S. Lind is director of the American Conservative Center for Public Transportation. He has a Masterās Degree in History from Princeton University in 1971. He worked as a legislative aide for armed services for Senator Robert Taft, Jr., of Ohio from 1973 to 1976 and held a similar position with Senator Gary Hart of Colorado from 1977 to 1986. See his bio at Wikipedia.
Mr. Lind is author of the Maneuver Warfare Handbook
Heās perhaps best known for his articles about the long war, now published as On War: The Collected Columns of William S. Lind 2003-2009
- His posts at TraditionalRight.
- His articles about geopolitics at The American Conservative.
- His articles about transportation at The American Conservative.
For More Information
Ideas! For some shopping ideas, see my recommended books and films at Amazon.
Please like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. For more information see all posts about doomsters, about fear (perhaps become our greatest weakness), about the RCPs, about the keys to understanding climate change, and especially these ā¦
- About the mass extinctions supposedly occurring now.
- Focusing on worst case climate futures doesnāt work. It shouldnāt work.
- Updating the RCPs: The IPCC gives us good news about climate change, but we donāt listen.
- Roger Pielke Jr.: climate science is a grab for power.
- Secrets about the 1.5Ā°C world temperature limit.
- A crisis of overconfidence in climate science.
- A look at the workings of Climate Propaganda Inc.
- About the corruption of climate science.
- The noble corruption of climate science.
Books about the crisis in climate science
The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters & Climate Change
The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened
Prove to me that weather is increasingly volatile. Sounds like availability and recency bias to me.
All the scary predictions by climate activists of dangerous global warming and wilder weather have proven false-to-date ā a perfectly negative predictive track record.
Every scary prediction about
EVERY “coming” environmental
disaster … has been WRONG,
since warnings about DDT
in the early 1960s.
A “perfect” track record:
Always alarmed.
Always scaremongering.
Always wrong.
Meanwhile, REAL air pollution
in Chinese and Indian cities
is completely ignored by the
so-called environmentalists !
Why?
Because pollution abroad is NOT
a crisis to help them win votes
in their home countries — this is
all about gaining and increasing political
power — not about the “environment”.
Leftists know how to use a “crisis”.
It doesn’t matter if the crisis is fake
— it only matters that people are scared,
and want their government to act now !
The (never) coming climate change catastrophe,
based on the junk science of (wrong) wild guesses
of the future climate, is the biggest science fraud
in history.
The climate has been improving for over
300 years, since the coldest decade of the
Little Ice Age (1690s) — and there is no evidence
that FUTURE global warming will be 100% bad news,
after PAST global warming was 100% good news !
My climate science blog:
http://www.elOnionBloggle.Blogspot.com
“Sounds like availability and recency bias to me.”
That’s likely, but Lind is prudent in making that concession (initially only, one hopes), given that he doesn’t want to be dismissed at the outset as a denier by his propagandized audience.
I strongly disagree if that is his strategy.
“Increasingly volatile weather” is a premise upon which Alarmists base their conclusions and thus recommended action.
If the public accepts the premise, they are more likely to accept the conclusion.
In my opinion, those of us who would prefer to not experience the draconian future Alarmist promote need to push back with data every single time that lie is suggested!
Contrary to the allegations of the alarmists, who argue that an increase in “extreme weather events” with global warming, increased greenhouse gasses should REDUCE cyclone energy and extreme weather events. Specifically, the energy for heat engines comes from temperature DIFFERENCES, not just from high temperatures. In the case of tropical cyclones itās the water being warmer than the air that supplies the energy.
But with global warming, the air wouldn’t be getting as cold as quickly in the fall, so the energy for tropical cyclones should be reduced . This is counter-intuitive to folks who donāt know physics, but itās why refrigerators consume electricity instead of produce it, and why tornadoes tend to be associated with cold-fronts.
Based on these stories, it looks like I’m right, and those who cry about warming increasing the frequency of extreme weather are wrong.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/2015GL064929
āRecent review papers reported that many high-resolution global climate models consistently projected a reduction of global tropical cyclone (TC) frequency in a future warmer climate, although the mechanism of the reduction is not yet fully understood. Here we present a result of 4K-cooler climate experiment. The global TC [tropical cyclone] frequency significantly increases in the 4K-cooler climate compared to the present climate. This is consistent with a significant decrease in TC frequency in the 4K-warmer climate.ā
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X06009186
āOur record demonstrates that the frequency variability of intense landfalling cyclones is greatest at centennial scale compared to seasonal and decadal oscillations. [T]he period between AD 1600 to 1800 [Little Ice Age] had many more intense or hazardous cyclones impacting the site than the post AD 1800 period.ā
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379115301335
āA comparison with North Atlantic and Western Mediterranean paleoclimate proxies shows that the phases of high storm activity occurred during cold periods, suggesting a climatically-controlled mechanism for the occurrence of these storm periods. ā¦ Periods of low storm activity occurred from 560 cal yr BC to 140 cal yr AD (SP9 and SP8, Roman Warm Period) and from 820 to 1230 cal yr AD (SP4, Medieval Warm Period).ā
http://www.sciencemagazinedigital.org/sciencemagazine/30_january_2015?folio=540&pg=98#pg98
āOur work illustrates a major constraint on the large-scale global atmospheric engine: As the climate warms, the system may be unable to increase its total entropy production enough to offset the moistening inefficiencies associated with phase transitions. ā¦ On a warming Earth, the increase in perceptible water has been identified as a reason for the tropical overturning to slow down, and studies over a wide range of climates suggest that global atmospheric motions are reduced in extremely warm climates.ā
“I strongly disagree if that is his strategy.
āIncreasingly volatile weatherā is a premise upon which Alarmists base their conclusions and thus recommended action.”
But I suspect it’s not a “strategy,” but a tactic, and initial seeming-concession that he will later withdraw once he’s got his audience willing to listen to him. That was implicit in what I wrote:
“prudent in making that concession (initially only, one hopes),”
A tactic like that is dishonest and only serves to fuel the fire. If an alarmist stopped reading at that point, they would feel vindicated.
“In my opinion, those of us who would prefer to not experience the draconian future Alarmists promote need to push back with data every single time that lie is suggested!”
Yes, skeptics and conservatives should stick to the facts. Mr. Lind is assuming things not in evidence. Someone should tell him.
I can understand the confusion since the alarmists blame every weather event on CAGW nowadays. Some people hear the same thing over and over again and start believing it. That’s one of the dangers of having the Left in control of 90 percent of the news media and entertainment media.
And Mr. Lind is not the only conservative with this problem. There are too many Republicans who actually think humans are affecting the Earth’s climate. They are also assuming things not in evidence. They must be listening to too many leftwing news channels.
We should require everyone to stick to the facts when it comes to CAGW. Especially Republicans. We don’t need a bunch of credulous Republicans giving aid and comfort to the enemies of freedom by thinking/pretending they know more about the Earth’s climate than they really know..
What’s prudent about attacking photosynthesis, the basis of life?
Sounds like live-TV-footage bias to me. The Weather Channel gives every rain cloud a name, and plays every passing gale for maximum drama throwing around words like “historic,” “unprecedented,” and “devastation” every time a thunderstorm blows down a tree. They replay tornadoes from a decade ago if it’s a slow day–and yet people eat this crap up for some reason, their ratings are through the roof!
“…prudence suggests we should pay some attention to climate change, or, to be more precise, increasing volatility in weather. That is something we can observe happening.”
Alternative take: The weather is not increasingly volatile. It’s simply that every significant weather event in the world is more widely reported, most often with a man-made climate change tag appended.
It’s also that more people are involved whenever one of nature’s normal events occur. The cost of recovery is the “unprecedented” factor, along with the number of people affected. Granted, they give global coverage to a storm that’s born and dies at sea (and a crew of idiots that has to be rescued from a yacht that blundered into it).
Agreed. I’m sick and tired of “concessions” made to alarmist bullshit. The weather is NOT becoming increasingly volatile, but weather REPORTING sure is!
I’m sure people tuning in to the “Weather Channel” have never heard a PEEP about the FACT that not ONE EF-3 or higher tornado struck the U.S. last year. Not ONE. If the Climate Fascist predictions were right, we should be bombarded with “strong” tornadoes by now. But they are NOT right, never have been, and never will be.
Warmer climate = BETTER “weather,” NOT worse weather!
Wake up and smell the BS!
The New left main objective is the same as the old left, a radical change of the Western society. They think that this will give them Paradise on Earth. And they will do everything, including lying, to bring that about. They have taken over and politicized Nature and itās environment and climate and produce almost every day a new way the World will end if we donāt go along with their radical change of society now repainted as a green change. But we have 100 years experience with this ideology and can safely claim that we will most probably get Hell on Earth if we do as they say. So for me itās no thanks. Climate science is a mess with ideological interference. So what can we do if we donāt know what is science and what is policy based science and what is science fiction? We wait and see?
So the whole thing of Russells is false premise based.
”Russell Kirk called conservatism āPolitics Of Prudenceā, and prudence suggests we should pay some attention to climate change, or, to be more precise, increasing volatility in weather. ”
I think Lind has misrepresented what Kirk meant about the politics of prudence. It has been awhile since I read it (I am now rereading Kirk’s seminal study The Conservative Mind, 7th ed.) but believe that Kirk meant that we should not abandon long human experience and ignore human nature by making drastic changes without good reason.
āThe Conservative Mind, 7th ed.) but believe that Kirk meant that we should not abandon long human experience and ignore human nature by making drastic changes without good reason.ā
The problem is the ideology that canāt see the logic in this or the Western World as being logical? Because the Western World is not working for them and they therefore have a bitter resentment toward it? 5% want to change a World that works okay for the rest 95%? Would it not be more logical that the 5% changed instead?
I do believe there has been more precipitation the last few decades. Is that what is meant by “increasing volatility”? However, there’s a very logical and natural explanation.
We’ve had +PDO conditions for about 80% of the last 4 decades. This leads to more El Nino events which cause more evaporation of warm ocean waters. Nothing wrong with this as more rainfall is good for planet Earth.
This is the natural variation in climate that has always been with us. Don’t let the propagandists fool you into thinking that human emissions are the primary cause.
We’ll need at least 200 to 300 years of high quality records before we could even begin to say what is normal and what is not in regards to weather.
In other words, we won’t know for another 150 to 250 years, whether the weather we are seeing now is abnormal.
How can there ever be a “normal” climate
on a planet not in thermodynamic equilibrium ?
The article has a very good line:
“fear is a growth industry.”
Even many as thoughtful and learned as Mr. Lind have been sucked into the false narrative. No Mr. Lind, our home planet is not suffering because we thrive.
Sorry, Mr. Lind was paraphrasing Russel Kirk, however, in accepting the left’s “increasing volatility in weather” talking point, we are only advancing the incrementalism that has delivered us to the precipice. The time for apologies and acceptance is over. It’s time to say, “NO”.
Please see my comment above about Lind misrepresenting Kirk
I’ll belabor the point. One must know what the past weather has been like in order to understand what the future weather may be like. Right now we are in the the coldest weather since about 9,000BC. Given the paleo records it’s highly unlikely that the weather is going to warm more than a couple of degrees before starting down again towards the next glaciation.
Believing that CO2 is any kind of major “control knob” on the climate is like thinking that grabbing the cat’s tail gives you control of the cat.
More like grabbing several HAIRS on the cat’s tail gives you control of the cat.
Philo: Having lived with cats for some years, I loved your analogy. Thanks…
GND 0-57
Still my favorite headline of the year and possibly the decade.
Thank you Sen. McConnell.
Typical Kummer double-speak, with Lind just parroting Kummer’s babble.
Face value and headline appear to be reality-based.
But then, the text (blah, blah, blah, blah) undercuts the reality immediately:
“…increasing volatility in weather. That is something we can observe happening.”
“Reducing our own consumption, including of fossil fuels, is desirable.”
So, if you concede that man’s consumption of fossil fuels is causing volatile weather, and ipso facto, climate, then there actually IS cause for alarm!
(Of course, reality is that weather is NOT “increasingly volatile,” and mankind’s well-being has INCREASED as our fossil fuel consumption has increased.)
Kummer and his ilk, like Lind here, are wolves-in-sheeps’-clothing.
They are not reality-based good faith commentators.
They have some sort of ulterior motive, playing both ends against the middle, or something. Just don’t know what it is.
But do not take them at face value. Better yet, just don’t take them at all.
“So, if you concede that manās consumption of fossil fuels is causing volatile weather, and ipso facto, climate, then there actually IS cause for alarm!”
Not necessarily, if the conceded-amount of volatility-increase is small, and the amount of CO2-reduction called-for is low. I assume that’s the case.
Well, first there IS no evidence of either fact:
1. That weather is increasingly “volatile”
2. That human use of fossil fuel has any discernible effect on the weather or climate.
Conceding reality is close to insanity. Once you enter insane-land, the degree of insanity really does not matter–a little insane, or really loony–both are the same!
Don’t assume anything with Kummer-Lind. They’re hiding their motives, and assumptions are dangerous when dealing with double dealers like that.
You’re giving Kummer-Lind way too much credit, if you think their “tactic” of conceding the Alarmists’ “climate change is caused by man using fossil fuel” is some clever ruse to suck Alarmists in for a coup de grace. It’s actually the exact opposite. The ruse is played against Realists at WUWT. They’re playing you–for some ulterior motive which is not clear yet.
See James Taylor’s just published piece on WUWT for real reality-based commentary on Climate Alarmists, with no Kummer-Lind hidden agenda.
“Republicansā Green New Deal-Lite Is Political Suicide”
Taylor says:
“Moreover, during the past 150 years, as Earth emerged from the Little Ice Age, the warming climate has brought immeasurable benefits that continue today, including record crop yields, a significant increase in global plant life, and a reduction in persistently cool temperatures that kill 20 times more people than higher temperatures. At the same time, extreme weather and climate events have become less frequent and severe in recent decades.”
Boom! No concession to their fantasy. No “tactic”. Just reality. Clear and unadulterated.
Accept no substitutes!
Kummer calls for massive increases in funding for climate science research, that is already excessive and the very thing that has produced the problem we now have.
Kummer is a wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing.
He speaks out of both sides of his mouth.
Beware such an amorphous character.
His background is many decades as a stock-broker. Stock-brokers’ job is to rile up the public, to get them excited so they’ll either buy or sell. That requires stoking controversies, and never taking a clear stand, all the while appearing to be a solid respectable citizen.
Read his missives critically. Or better yet, totally ignore him, and his buddies. Nothing good can come of him.
“He speaks out of both sides of his mouth.”
Indeed! How about this one? In June of 2018, on his post titled, “Scientists show why the climate campaign failed,” I told him:
Here’s how Larry Kummer responded:
And with that, he banned me from his blog. (It’s apparently terribly humiliating to him to have someone who has actually done research on the subject tell him to read some more.) And so what does he write on March 12, 2019? Well, first he favorably quotes J.D. Ward et al. in 2011:
And then he writes, “Their conclusion has been supported by other papers since then. Here is(sic!) some others.”
And what’s one of the papers he cites favorably?
So he now cites favorably Dave Rutledge, where mere months before he had written: “Rutledgeās wild speculation is nuts.”
Mark,
You’re spot on.
Kummer’s continued presence here is why I seldom read WUWT these days.
Were I you, I would not waste two seconds with him–he’s on a mission, and it ain’t positive.
Good luck!
“Were I you, I would not waste two seconds with himāheās on a mission, and it aināt positive. ”
I spend time responding to him, because he has–until March 12, 2019 at least–espoused a view that I know to be dangerously wrong.
He has repeatedly written that the scientists that support and put together the IPCC’s assessment reports are competent and honest. That is simply not true. And how do I know this? Quite simply, because it has been my education, business, and personal interest to know. I spent more than 25 years performing energy and environmental analyses (mostly related to air pollution).
I have been saying for close to 20 years that the IPCC’s assessment reports regarding their projections of future emissions are not simply incompetent amateurism. They are dishonest. Anyone who has any competence who performs even a somewhat cursory review can tell that the RCP 8.5 scenario (very close to the former A1FI scenario) is about as likely to occur as flipping an unadulterated penny and having it come up heads seven times in a row.
But there has *never* been an IPCC assessment report that has come anywhere near saying that…let alone trying to establish what is the most likely “business as usual” emissions scenario to 2100. When laypeople read people like Larry Kummer, the laypeople tend to think, “Well, he seems to know what he’s talking about…look at all the references he provides. It’s not the scientists’ fault.”
It is the scientists’ fault. They’re lying about likely future emissions and warming. And it’s not just what they write. It’s what they don’t write. Lying by omission is still lying. (Dammit.)
Mark,
You’re absolutely right, of course.
Kummer is slyly mendacious. He is a stock-broker peddling snake oil.
His missives appear to support a realist view of climate issues, at first glance. But then when you read him carefully, you discover that he “believes the IPCC” because “they’re scientists,” or something.
Look at the reactions here to this Kummer-Lind enigma.
Half, or more of the readers, based on comments, think that Kummer-Lind support a realist view.
A small proportion catch the double-talk–“increasingly extreme weather,” and “reduced fossil fuel use.”
He continues to get away with his ruse. I’ve been calling him out for a couple years. Yet, here he still is, blathering away with meaningless double-talk.
Worse than useless.
The unanswered question is: What’s his game?
D-oh! Missed the close on the bolding of “is“. (Sort of loses the effect when the bolding continues. š )
“The unanswered question is: Whatās his game?”
Mostly, I don’t think it’s worth the time to guess peoples’ motivations. I prefer simply read what people write and judge the statements, without regard to why the statements were made. For example, going back to the post Larry Kummer wrote when he kicked me off his blog, he wrote:
That seems like a remarkably foolish and ignorant statement. He’s saying that he’s spent over 10 years and written over 400 posts, and he’s never noticed the blatant incompetency and dishonesty of the IPCC? I could tell that the IPCC “projections” were incompetent and dishonest within…well certainly after performing less than 40 hours of my own analyses. But that’s just me. Like I wrote before, I’ve done energy/environmental analyses basically throughout my career.
And why did he use this phrase “stalwart (or dogmatic) supporter of the IPCC”? Why would anyone be a “dogmatic” supporter of any organization on an issue related to science? “Dogmatic” support is antithetical to good technical analyses.
So why did he make the statement? I don’t know. It seems to me it doesn’t much matter why he made the statement. What’s more important is that he did make the statement, and it is ignorant and foolish.
“Mostly, I donāt think itās worth the time to guess peoplesā motivations. I prefer simply read what people write and judge the statements, without regard to why the statements were made.”
Well, one of my professional specialties is detecting deception, frauds, and fakes. Digging into motivations is crucial.
Kummer carefully hides his support of the IPCC, cloaking it in his typical meaningless blathering.
He goes out of his way to appear on WUWT. He aggressively markets his website.
He attacks those who call him out for his fraud.
His motives are highly important. Is he a planted provocateur? Is he attempting to make realists look bad? Is he sowing discord within climate realists? Is he attempting to sway realists to the alarmist point of view? Does he have some plan to sell stocks, or some other commercial enterprise, based on his advice?
It’s very clear that he is NOT just a mis-guided, ill-informed, or ignorant soul in need of correction or guidance. If he were, then it would be worth investing time to help him understand reality.
So, his motivations, and his end game, are extremely important. Engaging with his nonsensical missives is a total waste of your time. The best thing we can do is simply continue to warn others that Kummer is a wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing.
Beware!
Hi Kent,
You ask, regarding Larry Kummer:
“Is he a planted provocateur? Is he attempting to make realists look bad? Is he sowing discord within climate realists? Is he attempting to sway realists to the alarmist point of view? Does he have some plan to sell stocks, or some other commercial enterprise, based on his advice?”
I just don’t see how you could answer any of those questions.
You also write, “Itās very clear that he is NOT just a mis-guided, ill-informed, or ignorant soul in need of correction or guidance. If he were, then it would be worth investing time to help him understand reality.”
It’s not very clear to me. For example, when he banned me from his blog for “Persistent misrepresentation and aggressive errors…” he tried to make this distinction:
I think this statement was simply one of ignorance and foolishness. He appears to be completely unaware that authors of the Riahi et al. 2011 paper that introduced the RCP 8.5 scenario:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-011-0149-y
…are in fact also authors of IPCC assessment reports. For example, both Keywan Riahi was a member of the Core Writing Team for the Synthesis Report of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report.
So when Larry Kummer wrote at Climate Etc.:
https://judithcurry.com/2015/12/13/a-closer-look-at-scenario-rcp8-5/
…I think he made that statement simply because he’s ignorant and foolish, rather than dishonest. I think he simply doesn’t know it is simply not possible for the “designers of the RCP’s(sic)” to be “either not understood or ignored by the IPCC’s authors.”
Of course, I could be wrong. But I think the Occam’s Razor explanation is ignorance and foolishness rather than dishonesty. But all that really matters to me is that he’s wrong.
“But the Left seeks far more. In fact, its goal is nothing less than total control of every aspect of human life, which we call ātotalitarianismā, justified by fear of climate change.”
It’s important to be careful when using this in a discussion. Most of the sheeple who are concerned about the climate are not trying to install totalitarian systems and they will automatically dismiss your concerns if you imply that that’s what it’s all about. But it’s useful to demand an acknowledgement that there are several different groups riding the Climate Change horse.
– Authoritarians see the issue as a way to increase government power.
– The UN sees a way to finally justify longstanding goals for wealth transfers.
– Politicians use the issue to push for higher taxes.
– Politicians also use the issue to justify infrastructure spending.
– Utility companies see a way to increase revenue.
– Other rent seekers aim to get rich.
– Activists are always looking for a way to save the world.
Scientists themselves will defend their positions as if their professional reputations, stature, and grant funding depend on it.
Good grief!
From the article above:
“A March 15 article by Larry Kummer at the Fabius Maximus website discusses how global warming advocates have misused a worst-case scenario to generate panic. Titled āAbout the corruption of climate scienceā, Kummerās article details how politicians are misrepresenting climate projections, especially one called RCP 8.5.”
And from Larry Kummer’s blog post of March 15:
My attempts to tell Larry Kummer precisely what he has apparently (finally!) learned got me banned from the Fabius Maximus website.
āThe work of the IPCC and major climate agencies did not have ālies.āā
I probably should have included the a link to the post Larry Kummer made and the comments that got me banned from his Fabius Maximus blog:
Fabius Maximus exchange that got me banned
Here’s a comment of mine early in the exchange.
From the article: “Russell Kirk called conservatism āPolitics Of Prudenceā, and prudence suggests we should pay some attention to climate change, or, to be more precise, increasing volatility in weather. That is something we can observe happening.”
No, no it’s not.
There is no observable increasing volatility in Earth’s weather. You’re drinking the koolaide when you say things like this because you certainly didn’t make this observation yourself and you are depending on other opinions to form your opinion, and unfortunately, you have placed your trust in the wrong people. You are wrong sir. If anything, statistics show the weather is getting less “volatile”. Where do you get your statistics? Not at WUWT, that’s for sure.
William Lind wrote, regarding “volatility in weather”: “That is something we can observe happening.ā
Tom Abbott responds, “Youāre drinking the koolaide when you say things like this because you certainly didnāt make this observation yourself and you are depending on other opinions to form your opinion, and unfortunately, you have placed your trust in the wrong people.”
Absolutely. Never write, “we can observe” if you haven’t observed it yourself. And with something as ridiculously vague and unscientific as “volatility in weather” you’d better have kept a 50+ year detailed journal of the weather. And you need to say exactly where this increase in “volatility in weather” has occurred.
I’d like answers to a few questions:
1 – Where does this census count of species die-off on this planet come from? New discoveries are made on a recurring basis, and frankly, considering that so many have gone extinct in the past, going back to the Cambrian epoch, most extinctions have taken place with no input from us. The current guesstimate just does not fit the real-world evidence.
2 – Since when would the end of a useless critter like the box elder bug – which even birds won’t eat! – a tragedy? And in what way did the die-off of the passenger pigeon and the ivory-billed woodpecker affect anything other than birders? And when is someone going to find it necessary to protect the brownheaded cowbird, a nest-parasite if there ever was one, from extinction? I’m a birder, otherwise I wouldn’t ask.
3 – The majority of people squawking now likely couldn’t tell you anything about the species that “disappeared”, other than the numbers. Are any of the current crop of environment hysterics ever going to bother reading up on what caused massive extinctions in the past, long before humans even existed?
4 – The translucent sheetweaving spider Islandiana lewisi was found last year in ONE cave in southern Indiana, and nowhere else. It’s a bug-catcher, probably turned into what it is now from a long line of inbreeding other spiders. So how would its discovery in ONE PLACE ONLY turn the world upside down if it suddenly disappeared?
I think that Lind makes it clear that the buzz words ‘climate change’, anything with ‘climate’ attached to it, and ‘fight climate change’ (with what army?) are just that – buzz words meant to stir your emotions and your fears, the same as the hyperbolic vocabulary used by weather guessers these days. Without banging the drum of emotional involvement, however small, they don’t get attention. Without attention, they lose the audience and that means financial loss in addition to loss of control of the “argument”.
Anyway, stock up on popcorn and other necessities. It may be a bumpy ride, but we have to be aware of the nonsense that is promoted as “fact”, especially when it is proven false and can be disproven by reasoned answers.
Sara, you refer to “weather guessers”. I have noticed that the “weather guessers” on our local “news” radio station (KNX) have become somewhat tentative about their three-day forecasts, and remarkably tentative about their five-day forecasts. Maybe their track-record for this past winter has taught them to be less-than-overwhelmingly certain about the future.
I”ve spent a good deal of time eyeballing Accuweather for hyperbole. I haven’t made a list, but they announced a few months ago that they were going to promote a 50-day forecast, when they are barely accurate with a 5-day time frame. Their website was the first place I saw the “bomb cyclone” reference to a storm, just ahead of the recent snowfall (which didn’t amount to a hill of beans around here). If the hollering “WOLF!!!” doesn’t stop, then no one will take them seriously when they actually do make an accurate forecast.
I find the National Weather Service’s 7-day forecast to be reasonably close to what happens, although they only predicted 1 to 2 inches in our storm on Friday and we actually got 3 to 6 inches, depending on where you were. I have pictures. I measured the load at 6 inches, but that’s local.
Accuweather, and others like them, keep dropping these exaggerations on people. It is like yelling “Wolf!” when there is nothing but a stray robin on the lawn. So if the weather birds in your area are backing off the “wow” stuff, it’s just as well. I’m hoping it will continue to drop.
The local Fox channel is closer to the real thing than Accuweather, and as I said, National Weather Service has a site that gives reasonably close, but flexible predictions for my area.
Saraā The extinction ācrisisā came in some large part from studies on island biogeography where species, mostly small, became extinct to be replaced by others. What was called āEquilibrium theoryā could roughly be measured by a turnover of species limited by amounts of energy and the less measurable number of niches, these a function of island size. This was extrapolated to āislandsā in larger habitats, such as a grassland within a forest. In many places such as where agriculture has become dominant such diversity of species disappeared as also rare species particularly, like desert fishes in springs.
I taught some of this up until a generation ago and it was fascinating, but it got corrupted from the environmental movement and a few (formerly?) excellent scholars of the subject and modelers who then extrapolated it further with great press coverage we now observe. Turns out, with exceptions such as when a spring or similar dries up and the species, usually closely related to more widespread species, disappears, nature has proven resilient. Surprisingly, in Texas for example, the number of species of cave salamanders unpredictably increased since the 50s drought and other predictions have not manifested themselves. However, certain areas of types of habitats, as in the replacement of tropical forests for palm oil plantations, agricultural lands to feed us, and lowland deciduous forests cut for ethanol, do get wiped out. Papers have now been written as to how even with some of these, often called āinsults,ā the overall ecosystem function, again measureable but elusive, seems to have been often conserved.
Iām not up on much of this except in the ocean, where very few species have become extinct, nearly all large, easily exploitable mammals. Same thing happened in all extinctions, species large in size are more susceptible. Species often have a tendency to increase in size, which brings on physiological constraints which can more likely reach a breaking point. Blue whales would be most expected to disappear.
Equilibrium theory gave rise to the emphasis on refuges with all sorts of restoration ideas that we are spending lots of money on. Predictions a half century ago of species with lack of genetic diversity causing near certain extinction, as in whooping cranes, havenāt proven true. I like this quote from Coyne, J. A. 2010. Why Evolution is True. Penguin Books. 282 pp.
āItās important to realize that species donāt arise, as Darwin thought, for the purpose of filling up empty niches in nature. We donāt have different species because nature somehow needs them…… The āclustersā so important for biodiversity donāt evolve because they increase that diversity, nor do they evolve to provide balanced ecosystems.ā Ecology is more complicated than climate partly because it depends so much on it.
We do need to be good stewards, nothing new about that, the Romans had refuges, and clear-cutting a continent still does not seem to be a good idea.
“For progressives, climate change, she argued, is the best chance to right the āfestering wrongsā of colonialism and slavery, āthe unfinished business of liberation.ā”
How is this green extremism not just another colonialization? First, colonize the minds and then occupy and exploit the countries via a compliant “green elite” bearing stamps of approval from the international green elite. This is giving international cooperation a bad name, and devaluing the word “environmentalist” which used to bear positive connotations. We should take back the agenda and take back the names.
Being a “green slave” with a colonized mind is not “freedom” in any sense of the word.
“the best chance to right the āfestering wrongsā of colonialism and slavery”
What festering colonialism and slavery? All the people involved in colonialism and slavery are long dead..
Current residents of the United States are NOT GUILTY and owe nobody anything! This is just another effort by the Left to divide people.
If you want to exact judgement on long-dead people, go right ahead, but don’t go blaming those currently alive for what happened in the past.. Current residents did not participate in those transgressions. Quit living in the past.
The Left has gone insane and are trying to drive the rest of us insane.
Nor is being an “energy poverty slave” going to “free” anyone – it’ll just enslave the rest of the non-ruling classes in ADDITION to those already in abject poverty.
As Churchill said so wisely, “The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.ā
So, she is arguing that ‘fixing’ the atmosphere will sort out the problems of colonialism and slavery??
This is delusional.
Even if we prevent ALL climate change and spread the wealth…we could still choose to have slavery!
Get yourselves a bucket of water and a heat gun and try heating the water through the surface. You will find that the water does not accept the heat. Have a nice day.
Inaccurate analogy and incorrect conclusion. A better analogy, but still flawed, would be to create a column of warm air above the bucket such that it stays in place. Depending on the volume of water, the temperature difference between the water and the air, the length of time you wait, and the accuracy of your measuring device, you would measure an increase in the heat energy of the water unless the amount was so small that evaporation swamped it out.
This isn’t complicated. It converges to socialism. It is a form of advancing humanity towards the secular Utopia. That is the religion of the left aside from being against anything that represents God. It is existential with them for very very deep spiritual reasons.
Two observations:
1. Crisis is the rallying cry of the tyrant.
2. We don’t owe future generations anything, other than raising our own children the best we can. Our ancestors didn’t owe us this life we have now; anything we got from them was a gift for which we should be thankful, but these gifts were not owed us.
It is funny to watch so many people pop off at simple and obviously true statements. That is a distinguishing characteristic of public discussions about climate, whether by alarmists or skeptics. This is why scientists in the past often commented here, but are now seldom seen.
Lind: “prudence suggests we should pay some attention to climate change, or, to be more precise, increasing volatility in weather. That is something we can observe happening.”
The most obvious example is warming. The world has been warming since the end of the Little Ice age. The longest hard data series is the Central England Temperature record. From quickly eye-balling it, the temp there was roughly stable from ~1700 to ~1970: a mean anomaly of ~0.2C (vs. 1961-90 LTA) and SD of 0.5C (assuming for simplicity that the distribution is normal).
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/
Since then it has broken out of that range. This warming is shown in most (all?) databases, both surface and ocean.
There is weaker but similar data about changes in precipitation and sea and land ice. These two changes will inevitably change weather dynamics – and other things, such as the rate of sea level rise. That’s volatility, in a lay sense.
Lind writes, as I do, about public policy. These things are happening, whatever the combination of natural and anthro causes. They have countless precedents in the past – but who cares? Wars and plagues have also happened in the past, but we still prepare for them – and work to avoid them or mitigate their consequences.
Being familiar with history, Lind knows that change is itself destabilizing. “Good and Bad” are terms used by historians looking backwards. For example, improved public health and medicine produce destabilizing population booms: a frequent cause of war in the past, and of social disruptions and poverty today. Eventually societies adapt, but only after much suffering.
Both global warming and cooling benefit some people and harm others. Those harmed don’t feel better at the pleasure of others. Preparation based on reasonable projections can benefit everybody.
“Reducing our own consumption, including of fossil fuels, is desirable.”
True, for many obvious reasons. Our current systems (globally speaking) don’t work well; we can do better. That doesn’t mean donning hair shirts and giving up cars and electricity. He’s written about some aspects of this at his The American Conservative transportation website.
“It is funny to watch so many people pop off at simple and obviously true statements.”
What “increasing volatility in weather” have you observed?
“These things are happening, whatever the combination of natural and anthro causes. They have countless precedents in the past ā but who cares?”
Who cares? Those who want to have a complete picture of what is happening with the weather. We have to have something with which to compare today’s weather in order to know whether we are seeing unusual happenings or not. Thankfully, we have historic records of the Earth’s weather and when we compare the historic record to the weather of today, we see that today’s weather is less extreme than it was in the past.
The CAGW theory says weather will get more extreme as the temperatures warm, but we aren’t seeing that, so that should give a reasonable person pause as to what is going on with Earth’s atmosphere. Getting at the Truth is a reason to care.
“It is funny to watch so many people pop off at simple and obviously true statements. That is a distinguishing characteristic of public discussions about climate, whether by alarmists or skeptics. This is why scientists in the past often commented here, but are now seldom seen.”
You must be talking about Alarmist scientists. The reason alarmist scientists don’t post here is because they have a very weak case and they know it. If they had the facts, they would be all over this website, regardless of the comments of others.
The alarmists can’t make their case. If they come here to try, they get humiliated. It’s hard to argue the facts when you don’t have any, so they don’t.
We would love to get ahold of those “experts”. That’s why they don’t come around. They get too many questions they can’t answer.
āReducing our own consumption, including of fossil fuels, is desirable.ā
“True, for many obvious reasons.”
Who is included “‘our’ own consumption”? Besides William Lind and you?
I want to increase my parents’ consumption of Bruster’s ice cream. To do that, I need to consume some gasoline. Is that OK with William Lind and you?
“Lind: āprudence suggests we should pay some attention to climate change, or, to be more precise, increasing volatility in weather. That is something we can observe happening.ā
The most obvious example is warming. The world has been warming since the end of the Little Ice age. The longest hard data series is the Central England Temperature record.”
I don’t understand why you have any faith in the official surface temperature record. You ought to know better.
Yes, the temperatures have been climbing overall since the Little Ice Age, but the temperatures don’t go straight up from there, instead the temperaures warm for a few decades and then they cool for a few decades and then they warm again for a few decades.
The United States surface temperature chart shows that the 1930’s were just as warm as today, as do all sorts of other unmodified charts from all around the world. What these charts show is that yes, it has been warming since the Little Ice Age but the peak of that warmth in the 20th century occurred during the 1930’s after which the temperatures cooled for decades down to the late 1970’s and then warmed up to the same level as the 1930’s, but no higher.
So since the 1930’s there has been no warming according to the unmodified charts. And, since 2016, which was the peak temperature of the 21st century, and was no warmer than the 1930’s, the temperatures have cooled 0.6C over the last three years. So is it warming or is it cooling?
So just saying “it’s warming” is not good enough to establsh anything about the climate.,
The bogus, bastardized Hockey Stick charts are leading you astray. You and a lot of other people, sadly.
The Climategate conspiracy was very effective.
The left don’t BELIEVE in CAGW. The Climate Plans they have published DO NOT REDUCE EMISSIONS enough to reduce temperatures by more than 0.05 C by 2100 according to their own phony science. The UN Climate plans only transfer money and keep the poor from climbing out of poverty…they need the poor to point out how good they are, because they care.
Leftists will never give up. They lust for power…and lust isn’t a strong enough verb. Attaining their world view (which doesn’t include a sovereign USA) is what gives their meaningless lives some false meaning. Of course the elite will feel good (meaningful living) when sitting in the seats of authoritarian power.
That’s why they gravitate towards government where power exists. Through the actions of government, Academia has been irretrievably corrupted as well as Science, Law, and Government itself. Media has always been corrupt (read history…esp US history of yellow journalism). The orchestrated media propaganda is so obvious. How else do you explain the use of the SAME CATCH PHRASE WORDS every day. And 100% of stories are pro-left and/or anti right.
Anyone that still watches NBC, ABC, MSNBC, CNN, PBS or CBS for news, is either passively uncaring and insensitive to the lack of veracity in reporting, or requires Fake News to be happy (because they are leftists).
The country is 50/50 polarized BECAUSE of this non-stop lying and propaganda.
The left lives on lies. They can’t even report the damned weather truthfully.
Those of us who value individual freedom as laid out in the Constitution and who value the truth cannot remain passive forever. Most of us are pretty busy…wrapped up in our rewarding lives. I am. But we need to get more active to find ways to avoid the eventuality of a civilization busting conflict, including another civil war. I will go to war before allowing the left get what they ultimately want…namely the confiscation of $100’s Trillions of hard won assets and the forfeiture of personal property and individual freedoms. Not gonna happen without violence. We didn’t start this conflict. The divide is the product of the left…their fault.
“Meanwhile, when we hear hysterical statements about global warming ending life as we know it in a few decades”
Yes sir. Global Warming and a few other things. The end of the world is a human obsession.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/04/16/theend/