Guest drive-by twofer by David Middleton
1. Global Warming —> Climate Change: Bush’s Fault
Our planet is in crisis. But until we call it a crisis, no one will listen
We study disaster preparedness, and ‘climate change’ is far too mild to describe the existential threat we faceCaleb Redlener, Charlotte Jenkins and Irwin Redlener
Wed 31 Jul 2019When Senator Kamala Harris was asked about climate change during the Democratic debate in June, she did not mince words. “I don’t even call it climate change,” she said. “It’s a climate crisis.”
She’s right – and we, at Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness, wish more people would call this crisis what it is.
[…]
In the early years of George W Bush’s first term as presidency, scientists were actually making serious progress in establishing overwhelming evidence that we were, in fact, facing a global crisis. Public opinion on climate change was shifting; Americans were curious about how worried they should be by the damage being done to our atmosphere.
Enter Frank Luntz, a renowned Republican pollster and strategist. Luntz was concerned that the Republican party was losing the communications battle. He advised Republicans to cast doubt on scientific consensus on the dangers of greenhouse gases and to publicly hammer home a message of uncertainty.
In 2002, Luntz wrote a memo to Bush urging him and the rest of his party to use the term “climate change” instead of “global warming”. Climate change sounded “less frightening”, he pointed out, “like you’re going from Pittsburgh to Fort Lauderdale”.
[…]
Caleb Redlener is an undergraduate studying public policy and communications at the Ohio State University and a summer intern at Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness
Charlotte Jenkins is a master’s of public health candidate at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia and a graduate research assistant at Columbia’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness
Irwin Redlener directs Columbia’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness and is a professor at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia
The Grauniad
As the crisis escalates… [The Grauniad needs your money]
“first term as presidency”
WTF?
Did they really write that?
I just love it when a bunch of Liberal Arts idiots write write something so stupid, that the SkepSci kids can shoot it down…
Both Terms Have Long Been Used
The argument “they changed the name” suggests that the term ‘global warming’ was previously the norm, and the widespread use of the term ‘climate change’ is now. However, this is simply untrue. For example, a seminal climate science work is Gilbert Plass’ 1956 study ‘The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climatic Change‘ (which coincidentally estimated the climate sensitivity to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide at 3.6°C, not far off from today’s widely accepted most likely value of 3°C). Barrett and Gast published a letter in Science in 1971 entitled simply ‘Climate Change’. The journal ‘Climatic Change’was created in 1977 (and is still published today). The IPCC was formed in 1988, and of course the ‘CC’ is ‘climate change’, not ‘global warming’. There are many, many other examples of the use of the term ‘climate change’ many decades ago. There is nothing new whatsoever about the usage of the term.In fact, according to Google Books, the usage of both terms in books published in the United States has increased at similar rates over the past 40 years:
SkepSci
Apart from being totally wrong about almost everything… SkepSci wasn’t even stupid enough to blame the name game on Republicans.
2: WTF Did Beto Say?
Robinson Meyer, a 20-something year old music major, is The Atlantic’s resident climate scientist. His expertise rivals that of shark expert Rob Riggle… (Eat, Prey, Chum is hilarious!)
SCIENCE
Climate Change Can’t Be Left to the Scientists
Steve Bullock just wasn’t right.
ROBINSON MEYER
JUL 31, 2019Amid the fireworks of Tuesday night’s Democratic primary debate, there was a moderately interesting exchange about the inherently political task of dealing with climate change. It happened among the not-so-killer B’s: the moderates Steve Bullock, Beto O’Rourke, and Pete Buttigieg.
Bullock, the governor of Montana, began by addressing Senator Bernie Sanders, asking, “Are we going to actually address climate change? … Or are we going to give people a better shot at a better life?” Bullock then added: “You can do both.” (This insight did not come as a surprise to Sanders, no matter what you think of his politics. The Vermont senator has endorsed the Green New Deal, which deliberately ties climate policy to several allegedly life-bettering policies, including universal health care and a job guarantee.)
Then Bullock attempted to depoliticize climate change: to make it a purely technical issue best left to professionals. “Let’s actually have the scientists drive this,” he said. “Let’s not just talk about plans that are written for press releases that will go nowhere else if we can’t even get a Republican to acknowledge that the climate is changing.”
[…]
The moderators then called on O’Rourke, the former Texas congressman, who replied to this point in a somewhat garbled way.
“I listen to scientists on this, and they are very clear. We don’t have more than 10 years to get this right,” he said, before pivoting: “And we won’t meet that challenge with half steps or half measures or only half the country. We’ve got to bring everyone in.” Then he listed a number of archetypes of Americans—Texans and residents of Flint, Michigan, and college students in New Mexico—who needed to be brought into the climate solution.
Maybe this wasn’t his point—and it wasn’t much of a point in the first place—but Beto seemed to suggest that the scientists can tell us only the scale of the climate problem. They can’t actually marshal resources to address it.[…]
Then Buttigieg, who so often cites his young age (and exposure to climate risk) as a major reason for his candidacy, started talking about Trump’s alleged bone spurs. For all the lip service that some politicians pay to climate change, lots of them just don’t know that much about it.
The Atlantic
So… If the politicians are too stupid and the scientists too impotent… Just who in the Hell can climate change be left to? At least Robbie didn’t call it a “climate crisis.”
Postscript
I just realized I didn’t use any geological puns… Even though both articles were nothing but horst schist… 😉
Awards
The Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness crew earns a triple Billy Madison…
Robbie Meyer earns a Wile E. Coyote bidirectional non sequitur trophy…
Dang, I can’t believe I just watched all 10 of those Looney Toons cartoons….lol…..Well, at least the physics portrayed were about equal to the physics of the “Climate Crisis” idiocy ! …..meep meep ! : )
RE: “WTF Did Beto Say?”
Who cares what Beto said???
I can’t tell how moronic it was unless I can get it translated from RFK Jr. babble into English.
Can somebody put this heat wave in Greenland in perspective…?
https://www.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=1745369&playlistId=1.4535501&binId=1.810415&playlistPageNum=1&binPageNum=1
Can somebody comment on Greenland’s heat wave before the MSM goes bezerk
https://www.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=1745369&playlistId=1.4535501&binId=1.810415&playlistPageNum=1&binPageNum=1
It’s hot in Greenland. Is that good enough? Or should I add that this sometimes happens in summer?
rick,
The previous 2 years it was bloody cold in Greenland. This year it is warm. This is normal seasonal variability.
Rick how many comments did you post requesting somebody comment on the below average temperature readings in the previous 2 years?
ALRIGHT! Now We Are Talking.
Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote, Outstanding.
David Middleton, you surpass yourself.
Chris Stigall has compared the Democrats with Wile E. Coyote, and President Trump as the Road Runner. Every evil genius thing they concoct (in their cave), supported with hardware from ACME, winds up blowing up in their faces while the President zips through unscathed. I really can’t think of a better analogy, myself.
“..Our planet is in crisis. But until we call it a crisis, no one will listen..”.
July UAH satellite temp record shows +0.38 deg C anomaly, which is down from June. Dr. Spencer says July was NOT the hottest on record. Warming rate remains unchanged at +0.13 C./decade. I am not a scientist, but I presume that +0.13 C/decade is within the the range of natural variability.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/
When you keep crying that there is a wolf at the door and no one ever sees one there, people will eventually stop listening to you. Climate alarmists still seem unable to understand that.
If I read Dr Spenser’s data right, June 2019 was in a 4 way tie for the 18th hottest month in the satellite data.
Yes, their political expertise seems limited to : shout and if they don’t listen, shout louder.
They have been playing this for almost 40y now and STILL don’t get it.
They have worked out Schneider’s famous “dilemma” of whether to be honest or effective: they have worked out how to be neither honest nor effective.
Their total incompetence, political naivety and total failure does not seem to temper their hubris. They still seem to think that some qualifications earth psuedo-sciences qualifies them to tell us how to run the world economy and politics in general.
There is no “damage” being done to the atmosphere. It does not give a hoot if there is a small change in a trace component.
Bernie comes to the rescue when the Democrats must face the prospect of being dishonest or ineffective, and he says, “we can be both.”
There is a “NEW” LOONEY TUNES on one of the cartoon channels, same old characters with (some) new technology. They probably will get around to it.
Any of the Looney Tunes after the 1960s are totally wussified.
I agree, same with Tom and Jerry ‘toons too.
Almost every Looney Tunes cartoon is about 20 years older than I thought it was…
I always thought Gossamer was from the 1960’s. Hair Raising Hare was from 1946.
The GOP could fully enact the new green deal and the environmentalists will still not vote for them.
It looks to me like they’re starting to understand that the scientific truth can’t support the alarmist position so they reinforce the emotional arguments instead. Next, we can look forward to the last resort of the political left where they’ll be calling skeptics racists …
Carbon dioxide has feelings too. It hasn’t figured out how to be something other than colorless yet, but give it time.
Greta reckons it has. But she is the only one privileged to see it so you’ll need to ask her if you want details. Perhaps she can get it to explain AGW to us as well!
Don’t you worry, Phil, they’ve figured out how to give it colour: they call it ‘Carbon’, and we all know what colour that is. The oldest (racist) trick in the book of how to frighten kids: tell them a black bogeyman is going to get them.
I never bother arguing the toss with anyone who calls CO² ‘Carbon’. They’re not scientists and not worth the effort.
The trouble is that half or more of scientists do call CO2 carbon even when in context it is incorrect to do so.
I know someone who is very-left-leaning and at least somewhat PC, who criticised me for saying “global warming”. That person told me that I’m supposed to call it “climate change”. This was in early 2016. When I told that person that the Union of Concerned Scientists was still at least sometimes calling it “global warming”, and I asked that person why I can’t call it “global warming” while the Union of Concerned Scientists can, that person then just started mumbling.
I have noticed the mainstream media saying “climate change” instead of “global warming” shortly after they started saying “African American” instead of “black”.
👍👍
I think we can agree on political correctness.
DM,
I agree that we can be merciless in our satire and correction of “politically correct”.
They will carry me to my grave before I cede any of my power, knowledge or accumulated wisdom to a self-appointed mob of nincompoops. Geoff S
PS. David, if I was not so ill I would be lining up, like you, to offer many more essays to WUWT. Meantime I am quite happy to have you doing the hard slog. We seldom disagree, even on small points. Such agreement is not by accident or statistical odds; it reflects a correct interpretation when many minds arrive at closely similar conclusions. There is a group name we could use. “Winners!”
Does the mumbler know that in the real world climate change means something other than what “climate change” means in Kleptocratia?
The new term should just be updated to “Climate REEEEEEEEEE” since really that encompasses the full breadth and depth of the current climate hysteria.
LOL. For those not familiar with reeee… I’m not clear on it’s origins, but it became really funny and popular (for me at least) when /pol/ (weaponized autism on 4chan) was trolling Shia LaBeouf’s “He (i.e., Trump) Will Not Divide Us” project in NYC, where zombies would stand in front of a camera 24/7 chanting “He will not divide us”. Some 4chan troll showed up and started chanting REEEEE! The trolling got so bad the project was shut down, but LaBeouf moved it to a 24/7 live video of a white “He will Not Divide Us’ flag on a pole back-dropped against the sky somewhere in the world. /pol/ was able to figure out from jet contrails, constellations, sounds and a lucky photo of Shia at a rural Tennessee restaurant where the flag was, and in the middle of the night swapped it out with a MAGA hat (or something similar).
Hahahahahahaha!!!! That’s gotta be the funniest video of the insane warmest kiddles I have ever seen!!!!!!
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! Hahahahaha!!!
We are in a climate emergency
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!
We are in a climate emergency
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!
We are in a climate emergency
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!
We are in a climate emergency
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!
There is no scientific consensus. Scientists have never registered and voted on the validity of the AGW conjecture. But even if they had it would have no significance because science is not a democracy.
Correct. Correct.
Climategate email 4141.txt
“… of which we know very little …” sums it up nicely.
Climate change skeptics are those who would read Gina McCarthy’s educational backround for being Obama’s second administrator at EPA and not not at least snort. If Social Anthropology and a masters in Environmental Health Engineering have any actual subject matter, at least it looks better than Women’s Studies.
George Bush, in fact, was the President who really got the bioethanol industry going. While not popular on here, this industry has removed and continues to remove more CO2 from the atmosphere than any democrat or useless EU administration will ever do.
Bioethenol is probably the worst of all options adopted to solve a problem that does not exist. The day someone decided, feeding an SUV if better for humanity than feeding a starving person, was the day society lost its moral compass.
Co2 is good for the planet it allows plants to grow it feeds people who are hungry and benefits all wildlife.
We need more of it not less.
Since all of it is burned, how does bioethanol sequester CO2?
The hypocrisy of the left is evident as he slate of Democratic Presidential candidates has no qualms about using the d-word to refer to skeptics which is as evil as the use of the n-word. In both cases, the purpose is to deprecate the recipient with prejudice.
The left has a long history of treating those that disagree with it as non-humans.
Deprecating the opposition has always been a staple of politics, but its asymmetric ramp up is a more recent phenomenon. Self righteous indignation accelerated this during the Obama administration as the left’s policies migrated far away from what the political right considered reasonable and beneficial. Meanwhile, the left refused to compromise on any point and got a lot of what they wanted anyway. They doubled down on the hateful rhetoric when Trump beat Clinton as the status quo of getting what they wanted was coming to an end they were unprepared for and as a result, they became bitter sore losers. They must have thought that with the help of the media and the worlds intelligence apparatus combined with political corruption at the highest levels of government, they couldn’t lose.
Guys, what I would like to have a look at is the various captured emails where they are shown lying is at their very core….”What do you think will happen if it is all shown to be natural variation?” “I guess we will all be hung.”
I would like to put that in a folder and bring it out once in a while to give some warmist believer something to consider.
“In the early years of George W Bush’s first term as presidency, scientists were actually making serious progress in establishing overwhelming evidence that we were, in fact, facing a global crisis.”
Golly gee, that is one actually, seriously, overwhelmingly poorly constructed sentence, in fact. For sure!
We might not be able to prosecute warmest’s for perpetrating the biggest scam ever on the people of the world, but perhaps we can lock them up for torturing the English language with an excessive use and abuse of adverbs…already! The language of climate change propaganda is worse than we thought!
“We might not be able to prosecute warmest’s for perpetrating the biggest scam ever on the people of the world, but perhaps we can lock them up for torturing the English language …”
To spell “warmist” with an “e” instead of an “i”, and to place the possessive (“) where it’s not indicated is yet more torture.
This is an old demand. In the early 1990s the IPCC came close to abolition because politicians felt scientists weren’t delivering the goods. Hansen told politicians we were destroying the climate. Yet early IPCC reports delivered equivocation and uncertainty. Bernie Lewin details the history in “Searching for the Catastrophe Signal: The Origins of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change“, 2017. Everyone should read it. Then you’d understand that today’s activist scientists are demanded by politicians; giving them what is the best way to promote one’s career. Now it seems even activist science is too scientific for the Guardian! They want certain evidence, or 100% consensus. To convince us to change everything about the world.
David, You are far better explaining geology, better stay away from political topics.
I think it’s more likely a case of people unfamiliar with American politics, slang and pop culture references having trouble following posts composed of American politics, slang and pop culture references… 😎
WUWT has an international audience, please keep that in mind when you are composing a contribution.
I’ll put that on my list of things people have asked me to take account of. It’s a long list… 😉
this is my Favorite roadrunner/coyote
I don’t know if “climate crisis” has the impact it once did. It is rather old, and outdated. I’m sure if we put our heads together we can come up with a phrase that gives people the full horrifying sense of our situation. Here are a few to get us started:
Climate Defcon 1
Climate Holocaust
Planetary Incineration
Catastrophic Climate Anihilation
We should reach Climate Defcon 1 in about 15,000 years…
I’m still surprised that “Climate Endgame” didn’t make the list this past April….
… we at Toilet Duck recommend …. Toilet Duck.
Climate Change — Global Warming/Global Cooling
Global Warming — Temperatures Going Up
Global Cooling — Temperatures Going Down
It would seem the media and many scientists are still advocating Global Warming.
FYI:
“I just love it when a bunch of Liberal Arts idiots write write something so stupid, that the SkepSci kids can shoot it down…”
From the article: “In the early years of George W Bush’s first term as presidency, scientists were actually making serious progress in establishing overwhelming evidence that we were, in fact, facing a global crisis.”
I don’t know how much “serious progress” they were making seeing as how to date it has never been established that there is any evidence human-derived CO2 is causing any changes in the Earth’s weather or climate, much less overwhelming evidence.
I don’t think evidence means what the author thinks it means. I think they are confusing speculation and computer models for evidence.
I wouldn’t be very popular at a climate conference, because all I would be doing is saying, “Where’s your evidence for that?” And since the targets of my question don’t have any evidence, they would not be happy with me pointing that out.
They could silence me with some evidence, but they don’t have any to use. I guess it’s a good thing I won’t be attending any of those climate conferences. No point in upsetting religious fanatics. Besides, I don’t have a personal jet to use. You have to have a personal jet to be a mover and shaker at the climate conferences.
I wouldn’t be popular at a climate conference either as all of the definitive evidence I’ve seen disputes what the IPCC must claim in order to conform to their charter of identifying science supporting the UNFCCC, where the transparent agenda of the UNFCCC is to replace free market capitalism with centralized control based on the false premise that the elites know better than the free market.
She’s a certificate?
I think she meant certifiable… 😉